Environmental variables?

vserghi · Post by **vserghi** » 2002 Aug 29, 17:01

Can you explain what the %sometext% thing in the address bar means (environmental variables I think you call it). This intregues me as i have never seen nor know what it can be used for.

Any more examples?

ta.

Post by **nikos** » 2002 Aug 29, 18:22

in the dark days of MSDOS everybody was using environmental variables for building and installing programs. Just run the command:

$ set

and you'll see a list of variables and their equivalents. Not all of them are path related, but some like %TEMP% could be handy, if you don't have a bookmark available. Usually these variables are set @ boot/login time (winNT) or by autoexec.bat in win9x

vserghi · Post by **vserghi** » 2002 Sep 02, 09:37

Well you learn something new everyday. That's bloody useful, Ta

Post by **nikos** » 2002 Sep 02, 11:06

i was thinking that this feature gives you an extra cheat mode for easily accessible "bookmarks"

you can setup a series of your own variables with short names like 1, 2, 3 or A, B, C and make them point to folders, e.g

set 1 c:\programs\thatone
set 2 d:\network\source
...

and then use these from the address bar with minimum typing like %1% or %A% etc. Of course you'd have to set those before you start 2x, typically using the System properties | Advanced | Environmental variables tab. The advantage these would have over plain bookmarks is that they can be entered as part of the target path, e.g.

%1%\subfolder

and so on