Using env may be slightly more portable if you're using an exotic login shell that doesn't support the "FOO=1 program" syntax - say, tcsh. But for most part, i

Using env may be slightly more portable if you're using an exotic login shell that doesn't support the "FOO=1 program" syntax - say, tcsh. But for most part, it's probably just people copying-and-pasting stuff without really figuring it out what it does. For example, compare "exploit #1" and the supposedly different "exploit #3" on shellshocker.net.