who interpretes the environment variables

[ujjwal bhoota]

My question is does Operating system interpretes any environment
variable for any purpose?? Or does it just see them as name-value
pairs??




One fact that I know is that OS is always aware that environment
variables exists for example there are system calls to get, set,
unset, clear the environment variables.



But are they used by OS in any way??


For example "PATH" variable is (probably) interpreted by shell and not
by OS.


Thanks and Regards,
Ujjwal

[Shaun Clowes]

"ujjwal bhoota" <ujjwalbhoota@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:98e0d8b3.0307091345.783a6cc3@posting.google.c om...

> My question is does Operating system interpretes any environment
> variable for any purpose?? Or does it just see them as name-value
> pairs??

It just sees them as strings and does not use them for any purpose, ever
(that I'm aware of).

> One fact that I know is that OS is always aware that environment
> variables exists for example there are system calls to get, set,
> unset, clear the environment variables.

These are not system calls, they're library calls (libc).

> But are they used by OS in any way??

Nope.

> For example "PATH" variable is (probably) interpreted by shell and not
> by OS.

Exactly.

Cheers,
Shaun

[Andrew Gabriel]

In article <NA0Pa.267$Vw1.13656@news.optus.net.au>,
"Shaun Clowes" <delius@no.spam.for.me.progsoc.org> writes:

>
> "ujjwal bhoota" <ujjwalbhoota@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:98e0d8b3.0307091345.783a6cc3@posting.google.c om...

>> My question is does Operating system interpretes any environment
>> variable for any purpose?? Or does it just see them as name-value
>> pairs??

>
> It just sees them as strings and does not use them for any purpose, ever
> (that I'm aware of).
>

>> One fact that I know is that OS is always aware that environment
>> variables exists for example there are system calls to get, set,
>> unset, clear the environment variables.

>
> These are not system calls, they're library calls (libc).
>

>> But are they used by OS in any way??

>
> Nope.
>

>> For example "PATH" variable is (probably) interpreted by shell and not
>> by OS.

>
> Exactly.

There was a unix varient which allowed environment variables in
symlinks (might have been Apollo, but not 100% sure). This required
the kernel to obtain the environment variable expansion from the
process accessing the link. I don't know the details of how it was
implemented.

--
Andrew Gabriel
Consultant Software Engineer

[ujjwal bhoota]

"Shaun Clowes" <delius@no.spam.for.me.progsoc.org> wrote in message news:<NA0Pa.267$Vw1.13656@news.optus.net.au>...

> "ujjwal bhoota" <ujjwalbhoota@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:98e0d8b3.0307091345.783a6cc3@posting.google.c om...

> > My question is does Operating system interpretes any environment
> > variable for any purpose?? Or does it just see them as name-value
> > pairs??

>
> It just sees them as strings and does not use them for any purpose, ever
> (that I'm aware of).
>

> > One fact that I know is that OS is always aware that environment
> > variables exists for example there are system calls to get, set,
> > unset, clear the environment variables.

>
> These are not system calls, they're library calls (libc).
>

> > But are they used by OS in any way??

>
> Nope.

So the next question is "is OS at all aware of existence of
env-variable or it just treate them as part of address space of
process"
For example consider following cases
1. On fork os duplicates the address space of parent process, so all
env-var also gets duplicated as side effect, without OS explicitly
knowing about env-vars. So os is not aware of env-vars in this case.



2. On exec the env-vars might be provided just like command line args,
so it seems here that OS must put them near stack. BUT it do not have
to be like that, for example after exec we can set env variable in
user context by using functions like setenv(). So os is not aware of
env-vars in this case also.

Please correct me if I am wrong.

-Ujjwal Bhoota

>

> > For example "PATH" variable is (probably) interpreted by shell and not
> > by OS.

>
> Exactly.
>
> Cheers,
> Shaun