Re: setenv

[Miles Bader]

tfb@mudslide.OCF.Berkeley.EDU (Thomas F. Burdick) writes:
>   (4) getenv and setenv both work on process-environment as they do
>       now, but before returning, ensure that Emacs' actual environment
>       reflects the content of this variable.  This will allow the
>       Elisp user to modify Emacs' own actual environment, won't
>       require any special knowledge of the system, and won't break any
>       existing code that may modify process-environment directly.

This means the the user still has to know about the two sorts of
environments.  They shouldn't have to think about it at all.

Having a user-callable `synchronize-environment' function might be
useful, but I think _only_ as a work-around for cases where the emacs
internal code doesn't do it yet (which should be considered a bug) -- it
ought to remain the job of the C primitives to synchronize the
environments when necessary (note that this is very rare).

-Miles
-- 
"I distrust a research person who is always obviously busy on a task."
   --Robert Frosch, VP, GM Research