Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!nosc!ucsd!ucbvax!CORY.BERKELEY.EDU!dillon From: dillon@CORY.BERKELEY.EDU (Matt Dillon) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: Enviroment (was Re: Yea, but can an Amiga Shell do this....) Message-ID: <8808220455.AA27577@cory.Berkeley.EDU> Date: 22 Aug 88 04:55:20 GMT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Lines: 19 :How does this allow a child to have an environment different from its :parent? Specifically : : grandparent : | | : parent1 parent2 : | | : child1 child2 It doesn't, but nobody ever said the UNIX enviroment paradigm was the proper way to go. The UNIX handling of the enviroment screws me up often. This way, not only is there a single, GLOBAL enviroment, but you have the added advantage of not having multiple redundant copies lying around ... in fact, none of the enviroment is in memory if you assign ENV: to your floppy or hard disk. Neither are there limitations to the enviroment size... Individual enviroment variables can theoretically hold entire file's worth of data. The only plausable assumption one can really make is that enviroment variables contain ASCII (can we even do that?). -Matt