Re: [RFC] {print,}env -0

[Jim Meyering]

Pádraig Brady wrote:

> Eric Blake wrote:
>> Since environment variables may contain newlines, but env and printenv
>> currently separate output entries via newline, we have a case of ambiguous
>> output.  For example, "env | sed -n '/^a.*=/ s,=.*,,p'" does not necessarily
>> tell you the set of environment variables beginning with "a", because I could
>> have done "export b=$'\na=c'".  What do list readers think of the idea of
>> adding:
>>
>> env -0/--null
>> printenv -0/--null
>>
>> as a means of unambiguously representing the current contents of the
>> environment with NUL terminators instead of newlines?
>
> It's consistent and makes sense.
> I've not needed it myself (I think :)),
> but I would say it's worth adding.

I'm on the fence, partly because you can simulate printenv -0 with this:

    perl -e 'print map {"$_=$ENV{$_}\0"} keys %ENV'

You can simulate env -0 the same way.
Certainly, env -0 and printenv -0 are easier to type and use.
Not strongly for or against.