shell environment variables

[Harter, Douglas]

Ran into a minor problem. I have a Perl program in emacs. In the shell I create 
a new environment variable (properly exported, of course). I do an 
M-x perldb to run the program. I cannot get the value of that new environment 
variable when the program runs.

Apparently the emacs environment that the perldb runs in does not update the 
external environment variables. Can it be done manually with an emacs command 
or automatically with a customization variable?