Powershell Setting Environment variable for local variable

Question

I am getting a list of values from the command line in format of key=val key=val, after splitting them down and then into key and value, I want to set an environment variable using the key.

I have tried the following code ($sstr is being set from arguments, but I have hard coded it to simplify the code), but I am getting 'unexpected token' error:

$retrievedVal = "key1=val1 key2=val2"

# Split the string, with space being the delimiter, leaving key=value
$sstr = $retrievedVal .split( " " )

foreach ( $var in $sstr )
{
    $keyvalueList = $var.split( "=" )
    $env:($keyvalueList[0]) = "Test"
}

Any suggestions to where I have gone wrong would be greatly appreciated :)

Answer 1

You can use Set-Item cmdlet:

$Name,$Value='key1=val1'-split'=',2
Set-Item -LiteralPath Env:$Name -Value $Value

Also you could use [Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable method:

[Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable($Name,$Value)

Note, what that only set process environment variables. So, it affects only your process and child processes, started from that point.