Re: FreeBSD has setenv but not clearenv

[Eric Blake]

On 06/05/2013 06:36 AM, Colin Watson wrote:
>>
>> clearenv() is non-standard (it is a glibc extension); but yes, glibc
>> documents that "environ = NULL" is a portable alternative.
> 
> Hm, that's not in my libc.info.  Do you just mean the code?

I found it in 'man clearenv' on a Linux system; so maybe that's in the
man-pages project instead of the glibc project.

> 
>> And yes, it is probably quite easy to write a gnulib module that would
>> provide clearenv everywhere, although I fail to see why applications
>> need the overhead of a function call when an assignment would do.
> 
> I was wary about other C libraries that might assume that the environ
> pointer can always be dereferenced; and e.g.
> http://hg.dovecot.org/dovecot-2.0/file/74d9f61e224d/src/lib/env-util.c#l56
> has some specific portability notes which indicate that "environ = NULL"
> isn't an adequate replacement everywhere.  This is the kind of reason I
> like to use Gnulib so that it can shield me from this nonsense,
> especially if somebody discovers another OS with some newer crazy
> requirement. :-)

POSIX requires assignment to 'environ' to work when doing wholesale
replacement of an environment, with one caveat - if your environment
requires certain variables to exist to guarantee conformance (think
POSIXLY_CORRECT or PATH, for example), then wholesale nuking of the
environment may result in your program transitioning into a
non-conforming setup, where things may misbehave compared to your
expectations since you are no longer protected by POSIX guarantees.
Thus, while 'environ = NULL' and 'clearenv()' do the same thing, neither
of them is very wise compared to constructing an environment that
preserves the essentials rather than stripping everything.

-- 
Eric Blake   eblake redhat com    +1-919-301-3266
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org

signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature