[RESOLVED] Environment Variables

I'm interfacing with a program that requires the use of the Path environment variable. My program has to modify the contents of this variable based on criteria selected by the user. So that I didn't have to parse/search through the path variable to find the part that I want, I created a new environment varibable named myPath. I add this to the Path variable by like this:

%myPath%.

This works fine but I want to eliminate the initialization setup where the user has to manually modify the path variable. I can create the new variable easily but how would I look to see if %myPath% is already in the path variable and if it isn't add it?

While I don't see what would be complicated about parsing the path environment variable, since each entry is seperated by a semicolon, here is an article I had found on setting environment variables via VB.NET code.

http://jtbworld.blogspot.com/2005/11...ing-vbnet.html

This code example shows how to check to see if an environment variable exists.

VB Code:

Dim strVariable As String = System.Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("VARIABLE NAME")
If strVariable.Length = 0 Then
    'Environment Variable does not exist
End If

Thanks for the input.

The problem with parsing through the path variable is that I would need to know what the path was in order to search for it. I may not know this information. This is some of my real code:

VB Code:

strBinPath = GetEnvironmentVariable("binPath", User)
        strBinPath = GetEnvironmentVariable("openPath", User)
 
        SetEnvironmentVariable("openpath", strBinPath, Process)
        SetEnvironmentVariable("binpath", strBinPath, Process)

the user is promted for the paths and the data is stored in an XML file.

VB Code:

dr("binpath") = frm.txtBinPath.Text
dr("openpath") = frm.txtOpenPath.Text

Then I manually set the path statement to include %openpath%;%binpath%.

I'm just trying to eliminate the manual step of adding the %mypath% to the the path statement. Can the % syntax but inserted with code?

Here's the problem. Although I enter %opensimpath%;%binpath% in the Edit User Variable dialog box for the path variable that path variable contains the values of the variables not the link to them. If I use the code below, the message box is never seen because the % is not really part of the variable.

VB Code:

temp = GetEnvironmentVariable("path", User)
        If InStr(temp, "%") > 0 Then
            MessageBox.Show("found one")
        End If

1) Which version of VS are you using.
2) Why does it have to be a part of the Path environment?

-tg

I'm using 2005.

The software that I'm interfacing with uses the Path Environment variable to find certain files. I need to to allow the user to change this path from my program but the other program will not know the path if it is not in the Path variable.

This kind of explains what I'm looking to do. I need to view the unexpanded version of the path variable, look for my variable %myPath%, and add them if they do not exist.

VB Code:

Set objShell = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
Set colEnvVars = objShell.Environment("User")
Wscript.Echo "Temporary folder (Unexpanded):"
Wscript.Echo colEnvVars("TEMP") & vbCrLf
Wscript.Echo "Temporary folder (Expanded)"
Wscript.Echo objShell.ExpandEnvironmentStrings("%TEMP%")

the output would be similar to this

Quote:

---

Temporary folder (Unexpanded):
%USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Temp
Temporary folder (Expanded)
C:\DOCUME~1\kmyer\LOCALS~1\Temp

---

Sorry for wasting yor time here's the REALLY simple answer:

VB Code:

temp = GetEnvironmentVariable("path", User)
        If InStr(temp, "%") = 0 Then
            SetEnvironmentVariable("path", temp & ";%myPath%", User)
        End If