Here, I will describe a couple of methods to determine Powershell’s environment variables.
Environment variables correlate names to values of special paths that the host Operating System relies on for functionality. For example, Windows hosts use an environment variable called TEMP to label a folder as the place for applications to place data that is temporary in nature - such as application installers.
Method One
ls env:
That’s “ell-ess space env colon.” ls is a Powershell alias for Get-ChildItem, Powershell’s method of listing the child items of an object. As Powershell treats everything as an object, directories included, Get-ChildItem will list the contents of a directory. (UNIX fans out there will recognize ls - I speculate that Microsoft added it to provide UNIX users with an intuitive method to greet the new Powershell. This was actually the very first command I typed in Powershell when I first tried it years ago.)
Some might wonder, myself included what the “env:” is. A few searches reveal that this is a built-in Powershell folder provided by the Powershell Environment Provider. The first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club. I will cover these in a future article as I’m curious and want to learn more myself. For now, it’s enough to know that Powershell treats “env:” as a directory - go ahead and try it!
PS C:UsersAdministrator> cd env:
PS Env:> ls
From here you can type ls, Get-ChildItem, gci, or whatever your preferred alias for Get-ChildItem is, and you’ll get the same results as our “ls env:”
Here’s a TechNet article on managing Environment Variables: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd347713.aspx
Method Two
[Environment]::GetEnvironmentVariables()
Method two uses the static method GetEnvironmentVariables() of the .NET class
[System.Environment] to list the same information as our ls env: I’ve been
heavily using Powershell for three or four months now, and I already thought
very highly of it. The features and scriptability of Powershell have rivaled
any I have used in other environments. I’ve known conceptually that Powershell
and .NET were intertwined, but it is only within the last week that the extent
of this commingling has made itself clear to me.
Powershell rocks!
More on .NET integration as I learn about it. For now, note that the [System.] part of [System.Environment] can be omitted. For more fun, try piping [Environment] to Get-Member.