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How to get environment variable value using PowerShell?
Environment variables are an essential part of the Operating System. They store various information like the path of the system files and folders, the number of processors system running, current user details, and more. Processes and programs utilize these environment variables to retrieve the data for their execution.
Environment variables in PowerShell are stored as PS drive (Env: ). To retrieve all the environment variables stored in the OS you can use the below command.
Get-ChildItem -Path Env:
Name Value ---- ----- ALLUSERSPROFILE C:\ProgramData APPDATA C:\Users\delta\AppData\Roaming CommonProgramFiles C:\Program Files\Common Files CommonProgramFiles(x86) C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files CommonProgramW6432 C:\Program Files\Common Files COMPUTERNAME TEST1-WIN2K12 ComSpec C:\Windows\system32\cmd.exe FP_NO_HOST_CHECK NO HOMEDRIVE C: HOMEPATH \Users\delta LOCALAPPDATA C:\Users\delta\AppData\Local LOGONSERVER \ADDC NUMBER_OF_PROCESSORS 1 OS Windows_NT Path C:\Windows\system32;C:\Windows;C:\Windows\System32 \Wbem PATHEXT .COM;.EXE;.BAT;.CMD;.VBS;.VBE;.JS;.JSE;.WSF;.WSH;. MSC;. PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE AMD64 PROCESSOR_IDENTIFIER Intel64 Family 6 Model 126 Stepping 5, GenuineInte
You can also use dir env: command to retrieve all environment variables and values.
To retrieve a specific environment variable, provide variable name after env:
PS C:\Windows\system32> Get-ChildItem -Path Env:\SystemDrive Name Value ---- ----- SystemDrive C:
If there are multiple values displayed for the environment variable then you can separate values using Split operation. For example,
$env:PSModulePath -split ';'
Output:
C:\Users\delta\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Modules C:\Program Files\WindowsPowerShell\Modules C:\Windows\system32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\Modules
You can also use the .NET method of class [System.Environment] to retrieve the specific or all environment variables. To retrieve all environment variables use GetEnvironmentVariables() class.
For example,
PS C:\Windows\system32> [System.Environment]::GetEnvironmentVariables() Name Value ---- ----- COMPUTERNAME TEST1-WIN2K12 USERPROFILE C:\Users\delta HOMEPATH \Users\delta LOCALAPPDATA C:\Users\delta\AppData\Local PSModulePath C:\Users\delta\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Modules PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE AMD64 Path C:\Windows\system32;C:\Windows;C:\Windows\System32 \Wbem CommonProgramFiles(x86) C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files ProgramFiles(x86) C:\Program Files (x86) PROCESSOR_LEVEL 6 LOGONSERVER \ADDC PATHEXT .COM;.EXE;.BAT;.CMD;.VBS;.VBE;.JS;.JSE;.WSF;.WSH;. MSC;.CPL
To get the specific environment variable using .Net method use GetEnvironmentVariable() method.
PS C:\Windows\system32> [System.Environment]::GetEnvironmentVariable('appdata')
C:\Users\delta\AppData\RoamingSee the link below for all the environment system class supported properties and methods.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.environment?view=netcore-3.1
If you check the above link, the GetEnvironmentVariable method supports multiple arguments.
GetEnvironmentVariable(String, EnvironmentVariableTarget)
We can pass the environment variable as a string and Machine as the EnvironmentVariableTarget in the example below.
[System.Environment]::GetEnvironmentVariable('PSModulePath', 'Machine')Output:
C:\Program Files\WindowsPowerShell\Modules;C:\WINDOWS\system32\WindowsPowerShell\ v1.0\Modules
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