The term state environment, or just environment, was used within the Terraform 0.9 releases to refer to the idea of having multiple distinct, named states associated with a single configuration directory.
After this concept was implemented, we recieved feedback that this terminology caused confusion due to other uses of the word "environment", both within Terraform itself and within organizations using Terraform.
As of 0.10, the preferred term is "workspace". For more information on workspaces, see the main Workspaces page.
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https://www.terraform.io/docs/state/environments.html