Sorting environment

[Jon Thackray]

Jim Balter writes:
 > Jon Thackray wrote:
 > > 
 > > I belive it to be part of the spec of CreateProcess that the
 > > environment it is passed should be sorted.
 > 
 > The CreateProcess documentation does not require this.
 > In fact, since the environment block can be in Unicode,
 > the sort order isn't even defined.

Quoting from the Oct 96 MSDN docs for CreateProcess, near the end of the
"Remarks" section:

  If the current directory on drive C is \MSVC\MFC, there is an
  environment variable called =C: whose value is C:\MSVC\MFC. As noted in
  the previous description of lpEnvironment, such current directory
  information for a system's drives does not automatically propagate to a
  new process when the CreateProcess function's lpEnvironment parameter is
  non-NULL. An application must manually pass the current directory
  information to the new process. To do so, the application must
  explicitly create the =X environment variable strings, get them into
  alphabetical order (because Windows NT and Windows 95 use a sorted
  environment), and then put them into the environment block specified by
  lpEnvironment. Typically, they will go at the front of the environment
  block, due to the previously mentioned environment block sorting.
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