How to set environment variables for current account that can be used by other applications?

In a matlab script, I am trying to edit the environment variable , namely "Path" for the current user.

Now, getenv("Path") gives all the Path variable available including the system-wide path variables but I am only trying to access the current user's Path environment variable.

So I opted for:

current_path = winqueryreg('HKEY_CURRENT_USER','Environment','Path');

This returns the Path Variable just for current user as a character array which I can easily manipulate/edit, remove and add the desired path to it.

edited_path = edit_path(current_path);

My problem is : I want to set this character array as the Path variable for the current user. I tried doing it with the system command.

system('setx Path =edited_path')

However, it simply returns 0 and does not work . I even tried just a basic thing like :

system('setx Path ="test"');

This did not seem to work either.

I also tried with the set command instead of setx because it is just the current session that needs the environment variable but that did not work either.

Now, I could opt for setenv but I am not sure if this would affect the environment variables for other tools/applications.

The idea is : the script would run another application through a bat file that needs to use the changed environment variable.

Is there any way to go about this?

Answer 1

[Abhishek]

Hi Biraj,

You can use the setx command along with the system function in MATLAB to set the environment variable "Path" for the current user. However, there are a few modifications you can try out to make it work.

Make sure to appropriately concatenate the edited_path variable with the system command string. Right now, rather than giving the variables value, you are passing the text edited_path.

In the system command, enclose the value of the edited_path variable in double quotations, this is necessary to handle paths with space and special characters.

% Get the current Path variable for the current user

current_path = winqueryreg('HKEY_CURRENT_USER', 'Environment', 'Path');

% Manipulate/edit the current_path variable as needed

edited_path = edit_path(current_path);

% Set the edited_path as the Path variable for the current user

system(['setx Path "', edited_path, '"']);

Further you can refer to the following documentation pages:

https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/setenv.html

https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/matlab_env/add-folders-to-matlab-search-path-at-startup.html

[Biraj Khanal]

I used the setenv and tried running the bat file and apparently, setenv can modify the path for current session and as a result any application run in the session takes the edited path. That is how I made it work.

But thanks for your suggestion. I see why the system command was not working because I did not concatenate the texts well. Thanks a lot! :)