This might be helpful:
export $(cat .env | xargs) && rails c
Or keep the variables local. This solves the potential problem when going from project to project.
env $(cat .env | xargs) rails
To ignore lines that start with #, use this:
export $(grep -v '^#' .env | xargs)
And if you want to unset all of the variables defined in the file, use this:
unset $(grep -v '^#' .env | sed -E 's/(.*)=.*/\1/' | xargs)
To also handle values with spaces, use:
export $(grep -v '^#' .env | xargs -d '\n')
on GNU systems or:
export $(grep -v '^#' .env | xargs -0)
on BSD systems.