environmental variables -- Technical Information

The environment is  a set of information that is  read by all programs that
run on  your system.   It consists of  one or more  environmental variables
that you  set.  For example, when you set  the environmental variable PATH,
you tell COHERENT that you wish to pass this information to all programs on
your system, including COHERENT itself.

By changing the environment, you can change the way a command works without
rewriting any commands that you  may have embedded in batch files, scripts,
or makefiles.

Your programs may  request environmental variables of their own definition.
COHERENT uses the following environmental variables to set its environment.
Note that the  variables marked with an asterisk are  used only by the Korn
shell ksh.

ASKCC..........Have mail prompt for CC names
CWD*...........Current working directory
EDITOR.........Editor used by default by mail
ENV*...........File read to set environment
FCEDIT*........Editor used by the fc command
IFS............Characters recognized as white space
HOME...........User's home directory
KSH_VERSION*...List current version of Korn shell
LASTERROR*.....Program that last generated an error
LIBPATH........Directories that hold compiler phases and libraries
LOGNAME........Name user's identifier
MAIL...........File that holds user's mail messages
MLP_COPIES.....Set default number of copies to print
MLP_FORMLEN....Set default page length
MLP_LIFE.......Set default life for print jobs
MLP_PRIORITY...Set default priority for print spooling
MLP_SPOOL......Pass user-specific information to print spooler
PAGER..........User's preferred output filter
PATH...........Directories that hold executable files
PS1............User's default prompt
PS2............Prompt when unbalanced quotation marks span a line
SECONDS*.......Number of seconds since current shell started
SHELL..........Name the default shell
TERM...........Name the default terminal type
TIMEZONE.......User's current time zone
TMPDIR.........Directory that holds temporary files
USER...........Name user's identifier

You  can also  set  the following  environmental variables  to control  the
default settings of  the COHERENT assembler as, the C  compiler cc, and the
linker ld:

ARHEAD.........Append options to beginning of ar command line
ARTAIL.........Append options to end of ar command line
ASHEAD.........Append options to beginning of as command line
ASTAIL.........Append options to end of as command line
CCHEAD.........Append options to beginning of cc command line
CCTAIL.........Append options to end of cc command line
CPPHEAD........Append options to beginning of cpp command line
CPPTAIL........Append options to end of cpp command line
LDHEAD.........Append options to beginning of ld command line
LDTAIL.........Append options to end of ld command line

See Also

get_env(),
unset,
Using COHERENT

Notes

To delete an environmental variable, use the command unset.

© 2012 by Stephen A. Ness