Getenvs

Getenvs is a term used in programming to refer to mechanisms, functions, or utilities that collect environment variables from the process environment. Environment variables are key-value pairs provided by the operating system to influence program behavior, such as configuration paths, user settings, and runtime options. The concept of getenvs encompasses both accessing individual variables and retrieving multiple variables at once.

In practice, developers frequently use language-specific APIs to obtain environment data. Some languages offer direct access to a single variable via functions named getenv or through built-in environment objects, while a construct called getenvs may be defined in libraries or codebases to fetch several variables in a single call or to expose all variables as a map or dictionary. The specific interface and naming vary by language and platform, but the underlying goal is consistent: obtain current values from the process environment.

Typical usage involves reading values with fallbacks when a variable is not set, handling encoding or null termination in low-level languages, and avoiding exposure of sensitive data in logs. Security considerations include not printing or transmitting the full environment in production environments, since variables may contain credentials or private information. Platform differences matter as well: Windows and Unix-like systems differ in variable naming conventions, case sensitivity, and path separators, which can affect how getenvs are implemented or interpreted.

See also: environment variable, getenv, process environment, environ.