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From: mly@PREP.AI.MIT.EDU (Richard Mlynarik)
Newsgroups: comp.emacs
Subject: Environment variables
Message-ID: <8710082023.AA05985@EDDIE.MIT.EDU>
Date: Thu, 8-Oct-87 16:26:31 EDT
Article-I.D.: EDDIE.8710082023.AA05985
Posted: Thu Oct  8 16:26:31 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 11-Oct-87 08:58:47 EDT
Sender: daemon@eddie.MIT.EDU
Lines: 16

A recent message claimed that the inability to set environment variables
is a reason not to use emacs as a login shell.

There is code distributed in Emacs to do this.  Change your config.h
file to include "#define MAINTAIN_ENVIRONMENT" (obviously, this doesn't
work under VMS)

MAINTAIN_ENVIRONMENT isn't turned on by default because of RMS' personal
preferences.  It is, however, available for all of us who feel that it is
the `right thing.'  The features added are `(getenv t)' (returns alist
of all environment variables) and `(setenv var val)' (sets environment
variable for current Emacs job and all its inferiors)

For hacking the environment passed to an inferior process, the `env'
program in emacs/etc/env is often sufficient.  For an example of its
usage, see emacs/lisp/shell.el