RE: Environment Variables

thanks to burce and james, it was good help.

> ----------
> From:         James Rich[SMTP:james@eaerich.com]
> Reply To:     c400-l@midrange.com
> Sent:         Saturday, April 13, 2002 1:37 AM
> To:   c400-l@midrange.com
> Subject:      Re: [C400-L] Environment Variables
>
> On Fri, 12 Apr 2002, Srikanth_D wrote:
>
> > hi all,
> >
> > while going through a sample program i came across the function
> putenv();. i
> > would like to know whether any environment variables will be set before
> my
> > program is launched, if yes how can i find out a list of them.
>
> There are typically several environment variables set.  You can ignore all
> of them unless you have a specific reason to use them.  Some common ones
> are the current directory, your username, the hostname, and your path.
> These may not be set on OS/400.
>
> > i have another doubt, since environment variables are like name=value
> why
> > can't we simply use program variables (maybe global variables). it will
> be
> > great if somebody can tell me an exact scenario to use an environment
> > variable.
>
> Environment variables are not to be used as program variables.  A typical
> environment variable use is to set preferences for an application.  For
> example, you could use an environment variable to allow the user to select
> their favorite way of displaying dates.  Suppose the user sets an
> environment variable called DATE_FORMAT to have the value '*iso'.  Your
> program could check for the existence of this environment variable and if
> it is defined use the value to change your dates to display in *iso
> format.
>
> An extreme example of environment variable use is in CGI programming.  The
> web server passes all data to a CGI program using environment variables.
> The CGI program then looks for these environment variables and acts
> according to the values they have.
>
> James Rich
> james@eaerich.com
>
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