thank guys for your answers. a few things to clarify:
1. I'm running on Linux 7.1 2. I'm trying to update the variable LD_LIBRARY_PATH. 3. I'm using bash.
I even tried eventually just for the test, to export LD_LIBRARY_PATH using backticks, like this:

`export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib`
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And it still doesn't work. if I do that from the shell prompt, and execute the C program from there too, it works.
Any Ideas?

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