Re: env -u behavior

[Eric Blake]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

According to Mike Frysinger on 10/24/2009 12:11 AM:
> On Friday 23 October 2009 14:44:03 Eric Blake wrote:
>> Is 'env -i -u a=b' really supposed to output a=b, or should it be an error
>> (because a=b is not a valid environment name)?  Right now, it is the
>>  former, because we are using putenv() to remove variables from environ,
>>  rather than unsetenv().  Similarly, should env -u '' issue an error?
> 
> i dont think these things should error as there's no actual limitation in the 
> coreutils code to do so (and POSIX allows this behavior).  the code should 
> call unsetenv() on whatever the user gives it.  so in these two cases, it 
> should do:
>       unsetenv("a=b");

Which is required to fail.  But right now we call putenv("a=b"), which
puts "a=b" into the environment instead of unsetting "a".

>       unsetenv("");

Which is required to fail.  But right now we call putenv(""), which is a
silent no-op.

> 
> same goes for setting invalid env vars like:
>       env foo.cow=moo some-cmd
> the env program should call:
>       setenv("foo.cow", "moo", 1);
> 
> the only error that should be emitted is if the underlying unsetenv() or 
> setenv() functions fail

But that's my point - we aren't calling unsetenv().  Should we be?

- --
Don't work too hard, make some time for fun as well!

Eric Blake             address@hidden
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (Cygwin)
Comment: Public key at home.comcast.net/~ericblake/eblake.gpg
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/

iEYEARECAAYFAkri8tEACgkQ84KuGfSFAYC/mACgjHEVsGr1LqNRKWX0JzPspOtR
Cb0AoKC5Y4/51KS9LoAbJ7e9Xs3FFXUa
=a/lR
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----