System Variable And User Variable In Windows Part1

This is a developer Guide to deeply understand System Variable And User Variable Concepts In Windows


System and User Environment Variables have always been a complex topic of discussion for day-to-day Windows OS users. What do they do? A tutorial on the internet said to add a PATH variable, but what is it? Where do I find these variables? All of these questions will be shortly answered in this post. We’ve tried to give you a high-level overview of what System and User Environment Variables are and how you can utilize them.

In this post, we will discuss Environment Variables, System and User Environment Variables, and how to add and modify them. Then we will move on to Dynamic System Variables and see how to use them in the command prompt.

What is an Environment Variable In Windows OS
Environment Variable is formed up by two separate words, ‘Environment’ and ‘Variable’. Let’s discuss ‘variable’ first. It means that the entity can store a value and vary from computer to computer. Windows provide an ‘Environment’ for applications to execute and perform operations and that is what makes the first word. Combining both, Environment Variables are those dynamic objects that store the values provided by the environment. Now environment provides values that help other programs in obtaining some crucial information about the system. Like there is an environment variable called ‘windir’ that corresponds to the directory where Windows is installed. To see this in action, open up an explorer window and type in ‘%windir%’ in the address bar. The Windows installation folder will open up.

Very similarly, you can make reference to the Windows directory using ‘windir’ variable in other programs and scripts. There are numerous other variables that can be accessed, ‘TEMP’ or ‘TMP’ is the variable that points to the directory where all temporary files are stored. The most popular, ‘Path’ variable is the one that points to the directories containing executable files. So that you can run a program from the Command Prompt in any other directory. We’ve explained Path later on in this post. All these variables come in handy when you are developing something or using the shell a lot.

What are System & User Environment Variables
Very similar to how the Registry works on Windows, we have System and User Environment Variables. The system variables are system-wide accepted and do not vary from user to user. Whereas, User Environments are configured differently from user to user. You can add your variables under the user so that other users are not affected by them.