what does the env in "env name=value command" buy me?

[Dan Jacobson]

dear sirs, is
$ env PAGER=cat LC_CTYPE=en_US.ISO8859-1 perldoc perltw
the same as
$ PAGER=cat LC_CTYPE=en_US.ISO8859-1 perldoc perltw
--
http://jidanni.org/ Taiwan(04)25854780

[John L]

"Dan Jacobson" <jid...@dman.ddts.net> wrote in message news:87iswoz...@jidanni.org...

> dear sirs, is
> $ env PAGER=cat LC_CTYPE=en_US.ISO8859-1 perldoc perltw
> the same as
> $ PAGER=cat LC_CTYPE=en_US.ISO8859-1 perldoc perltw

Yes. What the env command buys you is the ability to remove either the whole
environment or just selected parts of it. This can be very useful in testing, and in
making sure that your lovingly-developed new program does not have a hidden
dependency on something you added to your .profile three years ago.
Look at env -i or -u. Note that env -u VARIABLE command is *different* from
VARIABLE= command -- in the latter case VARIABLE is still in command's
environment even though it has been set to nothing.

John.

[Barry Margolin]

In article <b083i6$86c$1...@news5.svr.pol.co.uk>,

Another thing that the env command buys is shell-independence. In
csh/tcsh, to run a command with temporary environment changes, you would
need to do:

(setenv PAGER cat; setenv LC_TYPE=en_US.ISO8859-1; perldoc perltw)

The env command works the same no matter what shell you're using it from.

--
Barry Margolin, bar...@genuity.net
Genuity, Woburn, MA
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