Two aspects of filamentary molecular cloud evolution are addressed: (1) Exploring analytically the role of the environment for the evolution of filaments demonstrates that considering them in isolation (i.e. just addressing the fragmentation stability) will result in unphysical conclusions about the filament's properties. Accretion can also explain the observed decorrelation between FWHM and peak column density. (2) Free-fall accretion onto finite filaments can lead to the characteristic "fans"

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... of infrared-dark clouds around star-forming regions. The fans may form due to tidal forces mostly arising at the ends of the filaments, consistent with numerical models and earlier analytical studies.