Setenv Is Not Thread Safe and C Doesn't Want to Fix It

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www.evanjones.ca
10 days ago

Evan Jones reveals the dangers of using setenv and unsetenv functions in multi-threaded C programs, due to their modification of global state leading to potential crashes in threads calling getenv and in other languages utilizing C standard library functions. He argues for safer APIs and updates to outdated practices in C's handling of environment variables.