shell environment variables

shell environment variables

[Harter, Douglas]

Ran into a minor problem. I have a Perl program in emacs. In the shell I create a new environment variable (properly exported, of course). I do an 
M-x perldb to run the program. I cannot get the value of that new environment variable when the program runs.

Apparently the emacs environment that the perldb runs in does not update the external environment variables. Can it be done manually with an emacs command or automatically with a customization variable?

Re: shell environment variables

[Stefan Monnier]

> Ran into a minor problem. I have a Perl program in emacs. In the shell
                                                               ^^^
I see no reason to assume there's only one shell.

> I create a new environment variable (properly exported, of course). I do
> an  M-x perldb to run the program. I cannot get the value of that new
> environment variable when the program runs.

"the" shell is probably not the shell from which you started Emacs.
Each and every process has its own set of environment variables and
they are only copied from parent to child when a process is spawned.

If you use M-x setenv from Emacs, things should work better.


        Stefan