From: Rob Biedenharn <Rob@...>
Date: 2008-11-13T10:30:31+09:00
Subject: Re: Need tutoring on using a path environment variable

On Nov 12, 2008, at 7:20 PM, Rolando Abarca wrote:
> On Nov 12, 2008, at 6:22 PM, dkmd_nielsen wrote:
>> Let's provide more information.  The contents of pw_path include  
>> this:
>>
>> C:\PW\firstprep;C:\PW\rapid\docs;C:\PW\la;C:\PW\rapid;c:\pw\pst;
>>
>> And the application I want to execute is presort.exe, which is  
>> located
>> in c:\pw\pst;
>>
>> I would like to be able to tell the O/S you have to look in the above
>> folders to find presort.exe, just as you would using PATH.  In a
>> sense, I would like to temporarily merge the contents of pw_path into
>> the search path of PATH.
>>
>> Is that better?
>
> you can always store the path before and reset it after the system  
> call:
>
> old_path = ENV['path']
> ENV['path'] << ENV['PW_PATH']
> system(...)
> ENV['path'] = old_path
>
>> dvn
>
> regards,
> -- 
> Rolando Abarca M.


Of course, doing that kind of thing in Ruby should look like:

begin
   old_path = ENV['path']
   ENV['path'] << ENV['PW_PATH']
   system(...)
ensure
   ENV['path'] = old_path
end

-Rob

Rob Biedenharn		http://agileconsultingllc.com
Rob@AgileConsultingLLC.com