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Path Environment Editing Improvements in Windows 10


:P
On this page:

I was just poking around in my PATH environment variables as my machine is a relatively new install. To my surprise I found this new Path Environment Editor in Windows 10 Update 1:

Path Editing

A real editor for editing environment variables? And a way to manage the 50 or so paths I usually end up with in my SET PATH? Hell yeah… it only took 30 years for Windows to do such a simple thing.

It's sad, but this is exciting. How many times have you taken the path string out of the old editor and paste it into an editor just so you can read the freaking path, let alone edit it on a single line? Well, this is a welcome if long overdue change.

When you click on any environment variable you now also get a window that pops up that optionally lets you select a directory or file path:

EditEnvironmentVariable

Also notice that all of these windows are resizable which is another useful feature for seeing more of your system vars more easily.

More Please!

I hope we see more of this sort of thing in future Windows updates. Little things like this make life easier for many medial tasks and there are plenty of related things in the ancient Windows 3.x dated dialogs that can be improved in similar ways. Better late than never and I for one appreciate that!

Posted in Windows  

The Voices of Reason


 

offa
November 19, 2015

# re: Path Environment Editing Improvements in Windows 10

Hi, nice feature... at last.. do you know if they still have that 2048 bytes limitation like they had in Win7 (not sure about 8 / 8.1)

Jesse C. Slicer
November 19, 2015

# re: Path Environment Editing Improvements in Windows 10

While I (as a developer) do indeed welcome this, accurately described, long overdue change, wasn't the goal of Explorer (et. al.) to eliminate the PATH madness of years past? I'd say it's not only overdue, but largely unneeded at this point.

Jeff
November 19, 2015

# re: Path Environment Editing Improvements in Windows 10

Wow that is awesome!

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