I like to modify my Windows environmental variables by opening the Advanced System Settings -> Environmental Variables
. I particularly like that when I try to modify the system path (by clicking on System Variables -> Path
), that I get a nice, easy to read list of the folders on the path:
However, when I click on the User Variables -> Path
, I still get the old dialog, which is not very user friendly:
Is it possible to have Windows always display the list, as is the case for the System variables?
For what its worth, I think I remember seeing the desired behavior on a friend's computer, so I believe it should be possible.
EDIT:
It seems that having a variable as part of the path is the problem. Is there a way to get path list even when the path contains variables?
Context: When I want to add a program to my path, I will create a new variable that redirects to its path. The reason to do that is simple... Programs typically have compound paths, and so making a consolidated variable seems like a wise decision. For instance, on my machine, I have multiple python instances (sometimes I need an Anaconda installation of Python 3.6, and sometimes I want a version of the bare-bones Python 3.5). To accomodate this, I create environmental variables for the paths to each installation.
Now if I want to switch which version is on my path, I can simply update my path variable from
path=...;%PATH_PYTHON35%
to
path=...;%PATH_PYTHON36A%
See how easy that was?
The problem is that the GUI doesn't seem to like this for the local variables. I can confirm that this is the case because when I remove the variables from the local path, I get the nice list like the System Variables case. However, what is perplexing to me is that the System Variables path DOES include some variables as well:
So I take this to mean that there must be a way of getting the local variables list to pop up, just like the System Variables case...
Guess I'm late to the party, but this works for me:
PATH=C:\DATA\bin;%JAVA_HOME%\bin
whereas this does not work:
PATH=%JAVA_HOME%\bin;C:\DATA\bin
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