On Sat, 2005-05-21 at 19:09, THUFIR HAWAT wrote: > On 5/20/05, Markku Kolkka <markkuk@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > ... > > In Linux a new process inherits the initial set of environment > > variables from its parent process > ... > > so, when a command is entered it winds its way "up" (or down) until a > match is found. hmm, think must I on this. No, new processes start as a copy-on-write copy of the parent's memory. Thus anything set in the parent is automatically set in the child, but changes made by the child can't affect the parent's copy - and reasonable memory management hardware makes this a very cheap operation since the memory isn't really copied unless it is changed. -- Les Mikesell lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx
