On: Don’t use environment variables for configuration

[yokaze]

File permissions allow finer granularity of access control. Environment variables are visible to any user in the system.

[loopz → yokaze]

Not in any multi-user multi-process OS. You set environment variables in a process (ie. shell/CMD.EXE) and spawn child process (the program) from that parent. The environment variables will only be visible to those two processes.

[c0l0 → loopz]

Linux disagrees; try

    strings /proc/*/environ

to see for yourself.

On Solaris/SunOS, you could use `pargs -e $PID`. And so on.

Having separate UIDs to run your processes A and B under shields either one from peeking at the other's environment, though. UNIX DAC is simple and powerful enough for MOST security concerns, I would argue.

[josephcsible → yokaze]

> Environment variables are visible to any user in the system.

This is completely false in any modern OS. You can only see environment variables of your own processes.

[fps_doug → yokaze]

Unset them after right after evaluation.