Re: exec-path and PATH

[Christoph Scholtes]

Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden> writes:

> PATH in process-environment is not used within Emacs except to pass it
> to sub-processes.  Why would we want to restore its value after the
> sub-process exits?

Sorry Eli. This was my mistake. I was under the wrong impression that
Emacs worked with the OS's PATH directly and not with its own copy of
it. After looking at process-environment and the setenv function
documentation I see how it works.

However, now I wonder why we have a facility like exec-path at
all. Wouldn't the process-environment's PATH be enough?
(start|call)-process could look at PATH directly instead of
exec-path. This would also solve the problem of having to keep two
separate path collections (PATH and exec-path) up to date.

I saw that quite a few functions use exec-path, so I am not necessarily
suggesting to change it. I am just curious.

Christoph