I have an environment variable that I've set in ~/.profile with the following line:

export APPDIR=/path/to/dir

When I log in and load up a terminal, I can verify that the variable is set:

$ printenv APPDIR

/path/to/dir

I'm trying to access this variable from within a Qt application:

QString appdir = getenv("APPDIR");

QTWARNING("dir: |" + appdir + "|");

The warning window that pops up shows me:

dir: ||

What is going on here? Am I misunderstanding about how environment variables work in Ubuntu?

This is with a C++/Qt App on Ubuntu 11.10 x86.