RE: System properties

> What should be considered a system property?
> On Java, this is defined, but on other platforms?
> 
> What about environment variables? Does it make sense to consider these
> as system properties? I can't think of anything else that is portable
> across platforms.

Yes, I think it often makes sense to make environment variables accessible
as system properties.

In an early draft of XSLT 1.0 this was actually suggested as a possibility,
but then they took it out, perhaps because of concerns about security if the
stylesheet is untrusted.

I'd suggest implementations should provide a command line option "make
environment variables available as system properties in namespace X" to give
users the best chance of writing portable code, with the default being "no"
for security reasons.

Michael Kay