System.Environment (class)

Interesting properties and Methods

GetEnvironmentVariable()

The following simple example tries to demonstrate how the PATH environment variable can be determined with PowerShell:

$env:PATH="$env:PATH;p:\ath\to\foo\bar\baz"

$pathUser     = [Environment]::GetEnvironmentVariable('PATH', 'user'    )
$pathSystem   = [Environment]::GetEnvironmentVariable('PATH', 'machine' )
$pathProcess  = [Environment]::GetEnvironmentVariable('PATH', 'process' )

write-host "Paths of user:"    ; write-host ( $pathUser    -replace ';', "`n" )
write-host "Paths of system:"  ; write-host ( $pathSystem  -replace ';', "`n" )
write-host "Paths of process:" ; write-host ( $pathProcess -replace ';', "`n" )

Github repository .NET-API, path: /System/Environment/GetEnvironmentVariable.ps1

GetFolderPath()

If $folder is a value of a member of the System.Environment+SpecialFolder enum, the text value for this path is returned by GetFolderPath($folder), as is demonstrated with the following PowerShell snippet:

PS C:\> [System.Environment]::GetFolderPath([System.Environment+SpecialFolder]::UserProfile)
C:\Users\Rene

MachineName

MachineName evaluates to the NetBIOS name of the local computer.

OSVersion

OSVersion returns an System.OperatingSystem object.

SetEnvironmentVariable()

SetEnvironmentVariable sets an environment variable permanently or for the current process:

[environment]::setEnvironmentVariable('USER_VAR'  , 'foo', 'user'   )
[environment]::setEnvironmentVariable('GLOBAL_VAR', 'bar', 'machine')
[environment]::setEnvironmentVariable('PROC_VAR'  , 'baz', 'process')

SystemDirectory

The value of the property Environment.SystemDirectory is the name of the fully qualified system directory, for example C:\Windows\System32.

Version

Version returns a System.Version object that corresponds to the version of the Common Language Runtime.

Compare with [System.Runtime.InteropServices.RuntimeInformation]::FrameworkDescription