Question

Is it possible to make a batch file which can make a persistent change to an environment variable?

For example my installer.bat script copies some files to a random location in the computer’s file-system. I’d like to add that location to the PATH environment variable so that the programs can be run in the current session.

FYI – the stuff I am installing changes very frequently: I want to do a fresh install every single time I run the program. Also, I do not want to over-write other previously installed copies of the program just in case some other (older) instance is still executing.

I’d like to be able to do something like this:

rem install_and_run.bat install.bat  myapplication.exe  

Unfortunately this does not work, because the install.bat never ‘returns’ to the main-script. myapplication.exe is never called. Next I tried:

cmd /C install.bat myapplication.exe  

Unfortunately this does not work because it means that install.bat is run in an entirely seperate cmd.exe shell. That means none of the environment variable changes persist once the script terminates because the cmd.exe also terminates.

There must be a way to make a batch-file which changes environment variables

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

In your case, what you want is

rem install_and_run.bat call install.bat  myapplication.exe 

That is, use call to call install.bat, so that control will return to install_and_run.bat.

I think you don’t understand that environment variables are per-process. Your batch file is running in an instance of cmd.exe, and that instance has an environment. When you wrote cmd /C you were creating a new instance of cmd.exe, which has its own environment. Then install.bat was making a ‘persistent’ change to the environment of the new instance of cmd.exe.