It's really a function named module
. It appears in environment variables when you export a function.
$ test() { echo test; }
$ export -f test
$ env | sed -n '/test/{N;p}'
test=() { echo test
}
From bash documentation - export:
export
export [-fn] [-p] [name[=value]]
Mark each name to be passed to child processes in the environment. If
the -f option is supplied, the names refer to shell functions;
otherwise the names refer to shell variables. The -n option means to
no longer mark each name for export. If no names are supplied, or if
the -p option is given, a list of exported names is displayed. The -p
option displays output in a form that may be reused as input. If a
variable name is followed by =value, the value of the variable is set
to value.
The return status is zero unless an invalid option is supplied, one of
the names is not a valid shell variable name, or -f is supplied with a
name that is not a shell function.
=
sign)? Because for me, bash doesn't like it. However without the=
it would be a function definition. – celtschk Aug 29 '14 at 16:13