How to manage PATH variable in Windows?

Question

Every time I experiment with a new language, compiler, interpreter, tool, or whatever, and I want to run that from the command line, I would have to go to System and change my PATH variable. However, the box to put the monster string in consists of only a 1-line text box. I frequently find myself having to copy/paste the PATH string into Notepad just to edit it -- It's already over half a page. Right now I've counted about 30 different path URL's.

Is there a better way to manage paths than to squeeze all of them into one string? I'm thinking of using SUSE for development since my PATH is so messed up.

Answer 1

There is a really nice freeware environment editor available called RapidEE

Rapid Environment Editor

Rapid Environment Editor (RapidEE) is an environment variables editor.

It includes an easy to use GUI and replaces the small and inconvenient Windows edit box.

RapidEE 8.x supports Windows XP, 2003, Vista, 2008, Windows 7, Windows 8 & Windows 10 (including 64-bit versions).

If you still use Windows NT or 2000, then use version 6.1. For Windows 9x or ME use version 2.1.

Features

• Editable tree: Show environment variables and values as an editable tree.
• Portable mode: RapidEE doesn't require installation and could be run as a "portable application".
• Error checking: Automatically checking for invalid pathnames and filenames
• Multilanguage interface: RapidEE is translated into a number of languages (English, Russian, Japanese, French, Polish, German, Italian, Latvian, Slovak, Greek, Spanish, Chinese, Dutch, Swedish, Korean, Croatian, Danish, Brazilian Portuguese, Finnish, Norwegian, Indonesian, Romanian, Hungarian, Turkish, Abkhazian, Ukrainian, Czech, Arabic), and the language can be changed on the fly.

Answer 2

If you always start the command line from one or a few shortcuts, you can run a batch file when it starts. For example:

cmd /k autoexec_console.cmd

where the batch file could have

set path=c:\foo;%path%

or anything else, and this would persist only for that cmd.exe instance.

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XP's Service Pack 2 Support tools (looks like there's one for SP3, but it doesn't say what's in it) comes with a program setx.exe that works like a permanent set.

Answer 3

To better mange very long PATH in the default windows interface, you can have variable evaluated into variables :

SDKPATH -> some_sdk_path; some_more_sdk_paths; some_more_sdk_paths;
DEVPATH -> some_dev_path; some_more_dev_paths; %SDKPATH%
PATH    -> some_common_path; some_mode_paths; %DEVPATH%