Question

I tried searching this on Google and didn’t really learn anything as the search results usually pertain to other recursive subjects. What I would like to know is if a folder is in Path is it defined recursively (on Windows)?

I want to create a C:\StandalonePrograms and add that to path. It will contain a bunch of programming languages and other programs that usually come from zip files. I want to know that if by adding the program directory to it I can call all of the programs.

For example if I have C:\StandalonePrograms\SomeProgram can I open up a command prompt type someCommand and expect it to run from the C:\StandalonePrograms\SomeProgram\bin folder?

Or do I need to explicitly define C:\StandalonePrograms\SomeProgram\bin in my Path?

If I can’t are there any workarounds to achieve the situation I want?

Answer 1

You need to specify each directory individually, the PATH mechanism doesn’t walk through subdirectories.

A workaround could be a directory full of batch files (of some sort) that start the real tools with full path