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Well, environment variables are not "global" globals. They are just my globals, or my post-it notes for some variables. Because they are not per-user even. They are per user session.

10 processes can have completely different set of values for the same environment variables, because they are in their own environments, and apparently, that's useful.

There are foot guns, and there are unintentional consequences of implementation and design details. This is why we patch, improve and rewrite our software over time. To iron out these kinks.

Fire is also have a tendency to cause collateral damage. So use both fire and environment variables responsibly, and world will be a better place.



They are dynamically scoped variables. Very powerful, but only a slight step above globals.




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