Environment Variables

Environment variables may be accessed using a special four character prefix &($#!)@~ where the second character is one of $ for ALPHA, # for NUMERIC and ! for WIDE. For example, the environment variable ‘&$@~PROPATH’ contains the directory name set for PROIV (an ALPHA value), while the environment variable ‘&#@~BUFFERSIZE’ contains the NUMERIC value of the buffer size.

These environment variables have the same scope as value variables. PROIV sets the values for environment variables by first seeking their definition in the initialization file. Any definitions found in the initialization file are used. If an environment variable is not defined in the initialization file, PROIV attempts to get them from the system environment at the time of function loading.

Environment variables are read-only. They are copies of the true variable, thus changing the value of an environment variable does not change the value of the environment settings.

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Topic ID: 730005