Does adding directories to the Windows Path variable affect performance?

Question

The environment variable Path contains the places where Windows looks for programs to run files having the different extensions. More directories would mean more places to look in for the relevant programs, hence if there are a lot of directories, will Windows performance degrade over time?

I did try searching on Google, but I could not find anything, either for, or against, my question.

Answer 1

One thing that will effect your performance if you put it in the PATH are network locations.

You really want to avoid that, especially on unstable networks. Trying to access an unavailable location on the PATH is horrible in terms of performance.

Answer 2

Technically, it will most likely require more time to search more pathes. Practically it probably matters not one bit unless someone goes to the extreme to add thousands of pathes. Windows also uses some caching for the filesystem to accelerate such searches.