[Gllug] ADVERT: Shell Scripting book

[Alain Williams]

On Wed, Jul 20, 2011 at 09:58:49PM +0100, Steve Parker wrote:

> Here $foo has not been exported to env, but $foo is still a variable in 
> your current running shell.
> env is not a shell builtin; it does not report on your shell's state, 
> but on what your shell exports to called programs.
> Granted, we're getting down to terminology here, but from the bash man 
> page (with my emphasis added):

That is the internal workings of bash and their description of it.
The ksh manual page contains the following:

    Environment.
       The  environment  (see environ(7)) is a list of name-value pairs that is passed to an executed program in the same way as a normal argu-
       ment list.

and then see environ(7)

Actually the bash man page contains:

    ENVIRONMENT
       When a program is invoked it is given an array of strings called the environment.  This is a list of name-value pairs, of the form name=value.

We are arguing about the difference between ''the environment'' and ''an environment'',
the second is only relevant within the shell - the first is visible outside the shell
(ie by child processes) - this is what I have understood the environment to mean in 30
odd years of playing with Unix.

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Alain Williams
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