Re: CVS commit: src/bin/sh

[Valery Ushakov <uwe%stderr.spb.ru@localhost>]

On Sat, Mar 17, 2018 at 09:05:37 +0700, Robert Elz wrote:

>     Date:        Sat, 17 Mar 2018 03:46:44 +0300
>     From:        Valery Ushakov <uwe%stderr.spb.ru@localhost>
>     Message-ID:  <20180317004644.GH3278%pony.stderr.spb.ru@localhost>
> 
>   | That reminds me...  We currently abuse ENVIRONMENT section to document
>   | variables like PS1 or HISTSIZE which are quite obviously not
>   | environment variables.
> 
> Actually they are - those two particularly.   In principle, essentially
> all shell variables are (potentially) environment variables - all they
> need to be is either in the environ when the shell starts, or be the
> subject of export (or set -a).

Exactly.  And when all of them are, it kinda defeats the purpose of
them being in the ENVIRONMENT section.  Like, CFLAGS is not an
"environment variable" just because 

    $ CFLAGS=-g make

is something that one would commonly use.


> But it is very common for PS1 and HISTSIZE to be imported from
> the environment, and exported again

I probably should have used RANDOM and SECONDS as my examples :)


-uwe