Setting Windows variables from within a Perl script

[Winstonb]

Hello,

New to Perl and trying to set Windows variables from within Perl.

eg; set JAVA_HOME=C:/java

Does anyoneone know how this could be invoked via a perl script ?

Thanks in advance
Winston

 

[PinkeyNBrain]

I've needed this same functionality myself several times and ended up using work arounds. Re-investigating came across the following:

http://www.le-berre.com/perl/perlreg.htm

It involves interacting with window's registry. I haven't tried it but looks promising. One note, each process of windows opens it's own copy of the current environment. If a process is running in window 'A' and the registry later changed in window 'B', window A will not acknowledge the changes unless the program running in that window requests an update. If you're just after temp changes to subprocesses within your process and subsequent spawned/forked processes, you can always modify %ENV.

 

[Winstonb]

Thanks for that,

I have however stumbled across this, which seems to do the trick...

$ENV{'PATH'} = 'C:/mypath';

 

[PinkeyNBrain]

That would be modifying %ENV now wouldn't it?!?

Did a quick test under WinXP and observed that while you can change ENV{PATH} within the program, it reverts back to what the parent process has defined as ENV{PATH} once the program exits. The goal of the registry hack would be to alter subsequent spawned processes. My intent was to use this as a cheap way to pass information between otherwise non-friendly programs.