[ Please don't Cc: public replies to me. ] Thomas Koenig: > sed -e 's/^\([^=]*\)=\(.*\)$/\1=\2; export \1;/' Nit pick (and another cheap shot, sorry): This doesn't handle special characters. Merely adding single quotation marks around `\2' in the substitution isn't enough, either. (Doing the right thing is fairly easy, however, so this is just an implementation issue, and doesn't affect the validity of the principle.) > I think this kind of thing could be a good concept for handling the > environment variable issue. But only environment variables. If the goal is to make things work, it's too much trouble, since everything should work without special environment variables, and bugs need to be fixed otherwise. If the goal is to make a nice environment for new users, it's too little power, since it doesn't allow setting of aliases, for example. > BTW, there's at least one bug outstanding (#4130) which can only be > solved by setting an environment variable. If I understood the discussion correctly, it could be fixed by re-compiling (possibly after patching) the xcompat library instead, and that's the right thing to do. If that can't be done, then I still don't think this unfortunate special case requires the full power of the various suggestions. It can be handled as a special case and have the variable defined in /etc/profile, or, possibly, under one of the X setup files. -- Please read <http://www.iki.fi/liw/mail-to-lasu.html> before mailing me. Please don't Cc: me when replying to my message on a mailing list.
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