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by _y5hn 1908 days ago
Not in any multi-user multi-process OS. You set environment variables in a process (ie. shell/CMD.EXE) and spawn child process (the program) from that parent. The environment variables will only be visible to those two processes.
1 comments

Linux disagrees; try

    strings /proc/*/environ
to see for yourself.

On Solaris/SunOS, you could use `pargs -e $PID`. And so on.

Having separate UIDs to run your processes A and B under shields either one from peeking at the other's environment, though. UNIX DAC is simple and powerful enough for MOST security concerns, I would argue.