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From: roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith)
Newsgroups: comp.emacs
Subject: CCA Emacs bogosity (random environment variable)
Message-ID: <2750@phri.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 21-Jun-87 19:09:22 EDT
Article-I.D.: phri.2750
Posted: Sun Jun 21 19:09:22 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 23-Jun-87 00:41:19 EDT
Reply-To: roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith)
Organization: Public Health Research Institute, NYC, NY
Lines: 24


	I just noticed an interesting bogosity with CCA emacs (version
162.43z).  For some reason that I cannot fathom, the authors decided to
invent an environment variable called "henry" and set it equal to "1".  I
don't think I would be in serious violation of my non-disclosure agreement
if I revealed that the following source line exists, in e_init.c:

ppc[i++] = "henry=1";		/* Thank you, Robert Henry */

	OK, it's not a big deal, but it certainly seems to violate the rule
of least astonishment.  As long as you're just editing files, you won't
notice anything, but I was trying to debug some sendmail problems, using
Stephen Schaefer's "see" program (which prints out its argv, environment,
and stdin).  I was doing this inside an emacs shell window and was quite
surprised to discover "henry=1" in the environment printout.

	I don't know who Robert Henry is, but obviously he's somebody the
author wanted to thank.  Couldn't he have thought of a way to express his
appreciation without having mucked up my environment?  If you can't resist
this cuteness, at least document it and make it a feature!
-- 
Roy Smith, {allegra,cmcl2,philabs}!phri!roy
System Administrator, Public Health Research Institute
455 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016