[jstimpfle]

I'm not positive that it's elegant. It may also be considered an ugly hack (not sure either), and I'm pretty certain it's been responsible for many security holes.

It would be interesting to see in what ways Unix (especially shell scripts) would be different if processes would not inherit all the baggage by default.

[mort96]

There's a very, very fine line between an elegant solution and an ugly hack.

[jstimpfle]

It may be not fine (your sarcasm was noted) but I still don't see it in this instance.