The Old New Thing

Environment variable expansion occurs when the command is read

August 23, 2006 Aug 23, 2006 08/23/06

Raymond Chen

On the command line (and in batch files), environment variable expansion occurs when the command is read. This sounds obvious at first, but it has its own consequences. In the online documentation for , one such consequence is spelled out: would never display the message, since the in both "" statements is substituted when the first "" ...