System Expandable-String Environment Variables Can’t Reference User Environment Variables
- by Synetech inc.
Hi,
I’ve run into a bit of a situation with Windows environment variables. I’ve narrowed it down to what may or may not makes sense and/or possibly be by design. It seems that expandable-string environment variables of the local machine cannot reference environment variables of the current user.
For example if you’ve got the following environment variables:
[HKCU\Environment]
"CU"="CU"
"CU->LM"="%LM%"
[HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Environment]
"LM"="LM"
"LM->CU"="%CU%"
Then you get the following results:
> set CU
CU=CU
CU->LM=LM
> set LM
LM=LM
LM->CU=%CU%
It seems that user variables can expand system variable references, but system variables cannot expand (access?) user variable references.
I suppose that it makes sense if you think about it just right (eg like how user vars override/hide system vars of the same name), but it also doesn’t make sense if you think about it in even more ways.
So what’s going on? Is there a way to get this to work as expected?
Thanks.
