Setting environment variables and appending to system-wide %PATH% with a Windows batch file

Question

I'm trying to set three environment variables and append them to the machine path. Right now my code is like this:

setx CATALINA_HOME "C:\Program Files (x86)\Apache Software Foundation\Tomcat 7" /m
setx JRE_HOME "C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre7" /m
setx JAVA_HOME "C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jdk1.7.0_21" /m
setx PATH "%PATH%;%JAVA_HOME%\bin;%JRE_HOME%\bin;%CATALINA_HOME%\BIN;" /m

The first three when run alone work fine for adding the variable. However, the last line is resulting in the deletion of part of the original path and none of the additional variables appended.

My desired result would be the addition of the three variables and for the system-wide path to be

[original path];%JAVA_HOME%\bin;%JRE_HOME%\bin;%CATALINA_HOME%\BIN;

Answer 1

Part of your problem is that SETX isn’t SET –– after you do

setx JAVA_HOME "C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jdk1.7.0_21" /m

…, %JAVA_HOME% isn’t set in that instance of the Command Prompt.  You’d have to start a new instance to get %JAVA_HOME%, et. al., set.  I suggest you do something like

set  JAVA_HOME=C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jdk1.7.0_21
setx JAVA_HOME "%JAVA_HOME%" /m

I don’t see why you would be deleting part of the original path.  Access/modify the User path variable, not System path may be relevant.  And you might want to do

reg query "HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Environment" /v path

to get the system part of the PATH variable, excluding the user part.

Answer 2

If you use %var%, it is expanded at use. If you want to set a variable to include %var%, you need to write %%var%%.

Note also the registry settings are not seen by the current process, but are seen only by new processes. In winpe, these settings in registry are never passed to new processes, but the cmd environment gets the explorer environment, not the registry. For this reason people have written utilities rthat fiddle different environments.

If you want to read registry to the current cmd session, you may need something like Frank Westlake's conset.exe.

Answer 3

I've found that placing the /M switch early does the trick, even though they want you to place it at the end.

So for instance, this works:

setx /M PATH "%PATH%;C:\AddYourPathHere"

But this doesn't:

setx PATH "%PATH%;C:\AddYourPathHere" /M