When the desktop starts, the value of each UNIX environment variable is copied into the Deskshell variable of the same name. These variables start with a list of one string.
The variable path is set from the environment variable PATH, by splitting its value at each colon. Thus, if the environment variable PATH has the value ``.:/bin'' then path will be set to the two strings ``.'' and ``/bin''.
All other variables are set to contain no strings.