

This isn’t a physical drive, but a virtual file system.īecause environment variables exist in the Env: drive, you must prepend Env: to the variable name when you reference them. In PowerShell, environment variables are stored in the Env: "drive", accessible through the PowerShell environment provider, a subsystem of PowerShell. With environment variables, you can view and change variables in the Windows registry, as well as variables set for a particular session. 10 command-line tools for data analysis in LinuxĮnvironment variables in PowerShell are special kinds of variables that provide the system with information about the operating system environment.The commands are the same regardless of your platform, although the output will differ (for instance, it is statistically unlikely that your username is seth).

Users of the Bash shell should refer to my article abou t Bash environment variables.įor this article, I ran PowerShell on the open source operating system Linux.

This article is about environment variables in the open source PowerShell environment, and so it’s applicable to PowerShell running on Windows, Linux, and Mac. However, environment variables can be useful when you want to override default settings, or when you need to manage new settings that your system has no reason to create on its own. You usually don’t use environment variables directly, but they’re referenced by individual applications and daemons as needed. On a Mac: pwsh> Get-Variable HOME -valueOnly On Linux: pwsh> Get-Variable HOME -valueOnly On Windows: PS C:\Users\bogus> Get-Variable HOME -valueOnly How it looks in PowerShell depends on your operating system. Many are set by default during installation or user creation.įor instance, your home directory is set as an environment variable when you log in.
