[RESOLVED] Environment Variables

[campster]

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?

[kleinma]

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

[ProphetBeal]

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

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

[campster]

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:

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.

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?

[campster]

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.

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

[techgnome]

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

-tg

[campster]

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.

[campster]

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.

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

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

[campster]

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

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