Sometimes I need to change the order of an executable command that only shares the name. Let me show you a simple example:
λ where find
C:\Windows\System32\find.exe
C:\Program Files\Git\usr\bin\find.exe
C:\cygwin64\bin\find.exe
On this case, the Windows's 'find' command is called instead of the other two (GNU findutils). My question is quite simple: which is the right way to change the order or set one of them as the first preference?
Go to the environment variables definition of Windows and copy the existing entry for PATH. Create a new variable named BASEPATH and put all entries into it that do not belong to the list of paths where find.exe can be found.
Now create a file called fwin.cmd and put it somewhere on the PATH. The content of that file will look like this:
#echo off
SET PATH=C:\windows\system32;%BASEPATH%
ECHO Set path to search tools like find in Windows own folder
Create two files fgit.cmd and fcyg.cmd and change the PATH accordingly.
From time to time additionally installed applications will change your PATH. If this is the case you will need to add the new entries to the BASEPATH.
Depending on which find.exe you want, open a command line shell of Windows and call the corresponding cmd file. The path set by the batch will be local to the open shell, once you close it the setting will be gone.
You could also address the wanted find.exe directly but this means more typing and is probably not what you want:
dir C:\ /S | C:\Windows\System32\find.exe foo
I solved this by going in the environment variable, search for all path where your exe is and move up and down depending on the preferred order.
Of course this will affect other exe !!!
For this example below I add to move up and down in the system variables PATH and mypath.
C:\Users\duser > where sort
C:\Windows\System32\sort.exe
C:\Program Files\Git\usr\bin\sort.exe
to get
C:\Users\duser > where sort
C:\Program Files\Git\usr\bin\sort.exe
C:\Windows\System32\sort.exe
We can use setx as discussed here.
setx PATH "%PATH%;C:\Something\bin"
But this command can just make changed to user PATH variable not the system one.
How can we make a similar system wide command?
Type setx /? to get basic command help. You'll easily discover:
/M Specifies that the variable should be set in
the system wide (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE)
environment. The default is to set the
variable under the HKEY_CURRENT_USER
environment.
You need to run this from an elevated command prompt. Right-click the cmd shortcut and select Run as Administrator.
E.g.
setx /M PATH "%PATH%;C:\Something\bin"
Caution:
We may destroy the current system's PATH variable. Make sure you backup its value before you modify it.
From powershell
setx /M PATH "$($env:path);c:\program files\mynewprogram"
Solution when dealing with a >1024 char path:
None of the other answers worked in my case, but using pathed did the trick. You can append to path as simply as this:
pathed /append C:\Path\To\Be\Added /machine
You can check if the edit happened correctly by running
pathed
PS: if you want to change the user's path instead use:
pathed /append C:\Path\To\Be\Added /user
and pathed /user to check if it went through correctly.
PPS: In order to be able to run pathed from terminal, you need to put the exe in a directory already on your path (or add a new directory to path, but then you you might need to open a new instance of cmd.exe in order for the new path to be recognized)
One problem with %PATH%, is it includes the user's path. If you don't mind Powershell, you can run the following
$p = [Environment]::GetEnvironmentVariable("PATH", [EnvironmentVariableTarget]::Machine);
[Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable("PATH", $p + ";C:\MyPath", [EnvironmentVariableTarget]::Machine);
If you want to add some location to the PATH environment variable on user level, use the following on the command line:
setx PATH ^%PATH^%;"C:\Program Files\Something\bin"
Why the strange syntax?
First, you do not want to expand the system PATH variable but keep it as a symbol, otherwise you will not participate in future additions to the system PATH variable. Therefore, you have to quote the % characters with ^.
If you use this in a command script, you have to use double %% instead of ^%.
The " encloses a string that contains spaces. If you do not have spaces, you can omit the quotes.
The added string has to follow directly without space so the whole thing forms a single argument to the setx command.
Please refer to Adding a directory to the PATH environment variable in Windows
append_user_path.cmd
append_system_path.cmd
- both work just fine
I am trying to create a Jenkins build on a windows box, and am running into a situation where I am completely unsure of what to do.
I have the following shell script which I need to convert to a windows batch script for when the build runs. I have I believe gotten the set correct for the variables, just not sure what to do with the rest of it:
#set POWERUSER=DTCURTISS
#set POWERPASS=password
set POWERUSER=auto
set POWERPASS=password
set TAG=$BUILD_NUMBER
set PATH=.env/bin:$PATH
set SAUCEUSER=DarthOpto
set ACCESSKEY=accesskey
set IGNOREPAGEHEADERLOCATION=True
set MAINMENUCLICKTILES=False
set LOGDIR=logs
source ../.env/bin/activate
cd trunk/automation/selenium/src
#pip install -r pip-requires.txt
rm -rf logs
nosetests --nocapture --with-xunitmp -a valallmod --processes=$THREADS --process- timeout=5000
You are not going to get far if you don't know batch-file. Besides, simply "translating" bash to batch is not going to magically make it work on Windows.
Variables are referenced as %VARNAME%, not $VARNAME. Fix that first.
Windows uses \ as path separator, not /. Change all your paths to use \
When you want to append to PATH variable in Windows, you've got to make sure you don't destroy the existing PATH. You do this through set PATH=%PATH%;C:\whatever\yourpath\
Something similar to source would be batch's call followed by another batch file name. However you can't just pass it ../.env/bin/activate as that is not a batch file. You would need to convert that file to batch as well. And don't forget to convert the path separator to \. This is also where my second point comes into play. The file you pasted is rather simple. I've got no idea what's inside that other file or whether it can be "translated".
The # is not a valid comment in batch, you need to use REM or better yet ::
rm and it's flags is not a Windows command. An equivalent would be rmdir /s /q
Finally, nosetests is neither bash nor batch. It's an external program. You've got to make sure it is available in Windows. As a pre-emptive step before your next question, read this: 'nosetests' not recognized on Windows after being installed and added to PATH
I am trying to update the system Path variable in a win32 shell script but only if a value is not present.
My current version looks something like this:
for %%f in (xyz.exe) DO if [%%~$PATH:f]==[]; setx Path "%PATH%;%GRADLE_HOME%\bin" -m
The problem I am having is with
setx Path "%PATH%;%GRADLE_HOME%\bin"
This doesn't work, but if I change the quotes to single quote
setx Path '%PATH%;%GRADLE_HOME%\bin'
It does work but the Path ends at the first occurrence of Program Files. I.e abc;def;Program
Is there any way to overcome this?
Actually there is an easier way.. it seems to work but it is somewhat ugly and non-intuitive:
setx /M Path "%PATH%;%GRADLE_HOME%\bin
Notice that there is ONLY one double-quote and it is at the beginning .. if you put one at the end, it ends up in the path string (without the one at the beginning).
I am a bit late but I was looking for something similar and was unable to find it so I figured it out on my own. I was trying to set variable to launch VSC# from Command Line and the exe file for VSC# was present at a path containg space similar to your case. So the solution for me was to set variable using the following:
setx vcs "\"E:\Program Files\IDE\vcsexpress.exe\"
Single quotes never work in Windows. Period.
Your code does work for me with the double quotes, actually.
I found this question because I was looking for something a little bit different. I need to put quotes into the thing I'm setting. This isn't exactly what the OP is asking about but may be related if the problem is embedded quotation marks.
setx SVN_EDITOR C:\Program Files\vim\vim74\vim.exe
I found that this, while "correct", doesn't work because the user of this variable gets tripped by the space in the path so I needed to put quotes in there.
I found that
set SVN_EDITOR="C:\Program Files\vim\vim74\vim.exe"
worked just fine so I thought I'd try the normal way of escaping quotes on Windows:
setx SVN_EDITOR "^"C:\Program Files\vim\vim74\vim.exe^""
but this didn't work, resulting in the error:
ERROR: Invalid syntax. Default option is not allowed more than '2' time(s).
Type "SETX /?" for usage.
So I just opened system settings in the control panel and set the value in the environment variables GUI. Works fine now, I can type set svn at the command line and it shows quoted as I need it to be.
If you really need to set your environment variable programatically you'll need to look at banging on the registry yourself. This is pretty straight forward in both C and Python (and probably in other languages too). It doesn't seem as though setx can do it for you though.
The correct format is setx var "\path1;\path\path2\" /M only NOTE that since my path ends with a slash, the net effect is that the closing " is escaped and added as part of the path.
If your path ends with a slash... you must escape the last backslash... the corrected version is then
setx var "\path1;\path\path2\\" /M
The quotes are needed to protect any embedded spaces ..eg "program files"
I abandoned trying to use the %PATH% directly as this had the problems mentioned above with the spaces in the Program Files.
I wrote a small command to replace "Program Files" with "Progra~" but quickly I realised that this was no good as there were other paths with spaces. Replace
I found a good post describing quering the registry.
So as a test I set a System variable AAA with the path and the gradle appended
for /F "tokens=2* delims= " %%f IN ('reg query "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Environment" /v Path ^| findstr /i path') do set OLD_SYSTEM_PATH=%%g
setx.exe AAA "%OLD_SYSTEM_PATH%%%GRADLE_HOME%%\bin;" -m
Hope this helps
I've found the following to work with four leading spaces, and three trailing. Generally, Windows escapes a double quote with another double quote, so the trailing double quotes make sense, but the extra double quote at the front of the path is a bit strange.
setx VAR """"C:\path\to a file\with spaces\file.txt"""
I would like to know what are the approaches that you use to manage the executables in your system. For example I have almost everything accessible through the command line, but now I come to the limit of the path string, so i can't add any more dir.
So what do you recommend?
A long time ago, I tried to use softLinks of the executables in a Dir that belonged to the path, but that approach didn't work.
Throw the "executable only" to a known Dir,has the problems that almost any application require a set of files, so this also is bad.
Throw the executable and all his files to a known Dir, mmm this will work, but the possibility to get a conflict in the name of the files is very very high.
Create a HardLink? i don't know. What do you think?
This will parse your %PATH% environment variable and convert each directory to its shortname equivalent and then piece it all back together:
#echo off
SET MyPath=%PATH%
echo %MyPath%
echo --
setlocal EnableDelayedExpansion
SET TempPath="%MyPath:;=";"%"
SET var=
FOR %%a IN (%TempPath%) DO (
IF exist %%~sa (
SET "var=!var!;%%~sa"
) ELSE (
echo %%a does not exist
)
)
echo --
echo !var:~1!
Take the output and update the PATH variable in environment variables.
One way I can think of is to use other environment variables to store partial paths; for example, if you have
C:\this_is_a\long_path\that_appears\in_multiple_places\subdir1;
C:\this_is_a\long_path\that_appears\in_multiple_places\subdir2;
then you can create a new environment variable such as
SET P1=C:\this_is_a\long_path\that_appears\in_multiple_places
after which your original paths become
%P1%\subdir1;
%P1%\subdir2;
EDIT: Another option is to create a bin directory that holds .bat files that point to the appropriate .exe files.
EDIT 2: Ben Voigt's comment to another answer mentions that using other environment variables as suggested might not reduce the length of %PATH% because they would be expanded prior to being stored. This may be true and I have not tested for it. Another option though is to use 8dot3 forms for longer directory names, for example C:\Program Files is typically equivalent to C:\PROGRA~1. You can use dir /x to see the shorter names.
EDIT 3: This simple test leads me to believe Ben Voigt is right.
set test1=hello
set test2=%test1%hello
set test1=bye
echo %test2%
At the end of this, you see output hellohello rather than byehello.
EDIT 4: In case you decide to use batch files to eliminate certain paths from %PATH%, you might be concerned about how to pass on arguments from your batch file to your executable such that the process is transparent (i.e., you won't notice any difference between calling the batch file and calling the executable). I don't have a whole lot of experience writing batch files, but this seems to work fine.
#echo off
rem This batch file points to an executable of the same name
rem that is located in another directory. Specify the directory
rem here:
set actualdir=c:\this_is\an_example_path
rem You do not need to change anything that follows.
set actualfile=%0
set args=%1
:beginloop
if "%1" == "" goto endloop
shift
set args=%args% %1
goto beginloop
:endloop
%actualdir%\%actualfile% %args%
As a general rule, you should be careful about running batch files from the internet, since you can do all sorts of things with batch files such as formatting your hard drive. If you don't trust the code above (which I wrote), you can test it by replacing the line
%actualdir%\%actualfile% %args%
with
echo %actualdir%\%actualfile% %args%
Ideally you should know exactly what every line does before you run it.
if you are using windows vista or higher, you can make a symbolic link to the folder. for example:
mklink /d C:\pf "C:\Program Files"
would make a link so c:\pf would be your program files folder. I shaved off 300 characters from my path by using this trick.
In case anyone's interested...
I find I never really need all those paths at once, so I create a bunch of "initialization" batch files which modify the path accordingly.
For example, if I wanted to do some C++ development in Eclipse, I would do:
> initmingw
> initeclipse
> eclipse
This is also handy for avoiding conflicts between executables with the same name (such as the C++ and D compilers, which both have a make.exe).
My batch files typically look like this:
#echo off
set PATH=C:\Path\To\My\Stuff1;%PATH%
set PATH=C:\Path\To\My\Stuff2;%PATH%
I find this approach relatively clean and have yet to run into any problems with it.
I generally don't have to worry about this (I haven't run into a path size limit - I don't even know what that is on modern Windows systems), but here's what I might do to avoid putting a program's directory in the path:
most command line utilities get thrown into a c:\util directory that's on the path
otherwise, I'll add a simple cmd/batch file to the c:\util directory that looks something like:
#"c:\program files\whereever\foo.exe" %*
which essentially creates an alias for the command. It's not necessarily perfect. Some programs really insist on being in the path (that's pretty rare nowadays), and other programs that try to invoke it might not find it properly. But for most uses it works well.
But generally, I haven't had to worry about avoiding adding directories to the path.
Another idea: Use DIR /X to determine the short names generated for non-8dot3 file
names. Then use these in your %PATH%.
For example, 'C:\Program Files' becomes 'C:\PROGRA~1'.
USe the App Path registry key instead of the path variable for application-specific paths:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ee872121(v=vs.85).aspx
I wrote and use on a every-time basis a standard stream (stdin/stderr/stdout) & exit code PROXY program (called dispatcher https://github.com/131/dispatcher)
All CLI program i use (node, php, python, git, svn, rsync, plink ...) i'm using are actually the same exe file (around 10kb, that i just name differently), that i put in the same directory. A dummy static clear text file do the "proxy file name to real exe mapping".
Dispatcher use low level Process management win32 API to be absolutly transparent.
Using this software, i only do have ONE additionnal directory set in my PATH for all programs i might use.
Creating a folder c:\bin adding to your path and hardlinking like you said could shorten the string. Maybe add a variable pf to system vars with value c:\Program Files then replace c:\Program Files with %pf% in path.
Edit:
Create a virtual drive.
subst p: "c:\program files"
I follow these steps to make the entries manageable:
Created different users for different combination of software packages usage.
Example: (a) Created a user web for making available all the web development software; (b) Created a user database for making available all the database and data warehousing software packages. Remember some software may create more than one entry. Or sometime I break this into oracle specific and MSSQL specific and oracle specific users. I put MySQL/PostgreSQL, tomcat, wamp, xamp all into the user account webr.
If possible install common packages like office, photoshop, .. as system specific available for all users and special packages as user specific. Of course I had to log into different users and install them. Not all software may provide this option. If "install for this user only" option is not available, install it for the whole system.
I avoid installing programs in to the folder Program File (x86) or in to Program File. I always install into the base directory. For example MySQL 64 bit goes into "C:\mysql64" and MySQL 32 bit goes into "C:\mysql" folder. I always assume adding a suffix 64 only for 64bit software. If no suffix, then it is a 32 bit. I follow the same thing to Java and others. This way my path will be shorter, not including "C:\Program File (x86)". For some software the configuration file may need to be edited to show where exactly the .exe file is. Only program that demands to be installed into "C:\Program File (x86)" will be installed into that folder. Always I remember to shorten the names. I avoid version number like tomcat/release/version-2.5.0.3 such details. If I need to the know version, I create a file by name version and put it into the tomcat folder. In general shorten the link as much as possible.
Include any batch to replace abbreviated link to the path, if all the above steps passed the Windows limit.
Then Log into usage specific (mobile application, or database/data warehousing or web-development.. ..) user and do the relevant tasks.
You can also create virtual windows within windows. As long as you have one licensed OS copy, creating multiple virtual windows with same key is possible. You can put packages specific for a particular task in that machine. You have to launch separate VM each time. Some memory intensive packages like 3D animation movie makers all should be put into the main machine, not into VM as VM will have only a part of the RAM available for its use. It is a pain to boot each VM though.
The solutions above only work if you can trim down your path. In my case, that wasn't really an option, and it was a hassle to have to run a script every time I opened a command prompt. So I wrote a simple script that runs automatically when opening the command prompt, and appends the contents of a text file to your path.
There are also some contexts where having this script run breaks things (say, in a github or cygwin shell), so I also added a file that contains a list of paths that, if the command prompt is started in them, the path variable isn't changed via the startup script that normally updates the path.
#echo off
:: Modify these to the actual paths of these two files
set dontSetupFile=C:\Users\Yams\Dontsetup.txt
set pathFile=C:\Users\Yams\Path.txt
:: Retrieve the current path (for determining whether or not we should append to our path)
set curDir=%cd%
:: Be done if the current path is listed in the dontSetupFile
SetLocal EnableDelayedExpansion
for /F "delims=" %%i in (%dontSetupFile%) do (
if "%%i"=="%curDir%" GOTO AllDone
)
:: Append the pathFile to our current PATH
set pathAppend=
for /F "delims=" %%i in (%pathFile%) do (set pathAppend=!pathAppend!%%i)
set PATH=%PATH%;%pathAppend%
:: The only way to actually modify a command prompt's path via a batch file is by starting
:: up another command prompt window. So we will do this, however, if this script is
:: automatically called on startup of any command prompt window, it will infinately
:: recurse and bad things will happen.
:: If we already ran, we are done
if "%yams%"=="onion" GOTO AllDone
:: Otherwise, flag that we just ran, and then start up a new command prompt window
:: with this flag set
set yams=onion
cmd \K set PATH=%PATH%;
:: When that command prompt exits, it will load back up this command prompt window, and
:: then the user will need to exit out of this as well. This causes this window to
:: automatically exit once the cmd it just spawned is closed.
exit()
:: Path is set up, we are done!
:AllDone
#echo on
And Path.txt will look something like
C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\google_appengine;
C:\Program Files (x86)\ATI Technologies\ATI.ACE\Core-Static;
C:\Program Files (x86)\NVIDIA Corporation\PhysX\Common;
C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\110\Tools\Binn;
C:\Program Files\Microsoft DNX\Dnvm;
C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\8.0\Windows Performance Toolkit;
While Dontsetup.txt will look something like
C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\8.0\Windows Performance Toolkit
C:\Program Files (x86)\Git\cmd
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\VC\bin
To make this run automatically on startup, open regedit, navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/Microsoft/Command Processor, then right click on the right and press new -> Multi-String Value. Name it AutoRun. Set it's value to
C:\Users\Yams\setUpPath.bat
or wherever else you stored the batch file above.
Didn't try it, but will splitting PATH in parts work and joining them in final variable work?
Example initially let's say you have something like
PATH={LONGPATH1};{LONGPATH2};....{2048th char}....{LONGPATH_N-1};{LONGPATH_N}
Instead you create:
_PATH1 = {LONGPATH1};{LONGPATH2};....{2048 char}
_PATH2 = {2049th char}...{LONGPATH_N-1};{LONGPATH_N}
rem // may be more parts
PATH = %_PATH1%;%_PATH2%