In windows cmd I could echo any environmental variable with echo %VARIABLENAME%, such as
But in powershell, this behavior is inconsistent and I could not understand. For certain variables like $HOME I could do the same thing (echo $VARIABLENAME) as in windows cmd.
But for some other variables I could not simply echo but have to use .NET's class methods, such like
I would like to:
- Understand the difference between Powershell and windows cmd. Why they behave differently when accessing and printing environmental variables.
- Understand why certain variable is echolable while others are not in powershell. What is the rule behind that.
I am new to powershell. The purpose of this question is not just getting the variable printed, but understanding how things work in powershell and the difference between windows cmd, so that I could better use it.
CodePudding user response：
PowerShell exposes environmental variables via the $Env: scope (you can read more about scopes here)
So to access the USERPROFILE environmental variable, you could do the following (note, I'm using Write-Host in place of echo here, see this answer for details on the difference between the two):
Write-Host $Env:USERPROFILE
PowerShell also exposes a number of automatic variables and these are made available to all scripts and commands.
$HOME for example is one such automatic variable.
For further information on these, see Automatic Variables