Setting windows powershell path variable

Question

So I've found out that setting the PATH environment variable affects only the old command prompt, powershell seems to have different environment settings. How do I change the environment variables for powershell (v1)?

Note:

I want to make my changes permanent, so I don't have to set it every time I run powershell. Does powershell have a profile file? Something like bash profile on unix?

Answer 1

Changing the actual environment variables can be done by using the env: namespace / drive info. For example this code will update the path environment variable

$env:Path = "SomeRandomPath";

There are ways to make environment settings permanent but if you are only using them from PowerShell, it's probably a lot better to use your profile to initiate the settings. On startup, powershell will run any .ps1 files it finds in the WindowsPowerShell directory under my documents. Typically you have a profile.ps1 file already there. The path on my computer is

c:\Users\JaredPar\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\profile.ps1

Answer 2

If you need to modify PATH environment variable temporarily, some time during PowerShell session, you can do it this way:

$env:Path = $env:Path + ";C:\Program Files\GnuWin32\bin"

Answer 3

you can also modify user/system environment variable like followings.

### Modify system environment variable ###
[Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable( "Path", $env:Path, [System.EnvironmentVariableTarget]::Machine )

### Modify user environment variable ###
[Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable( "INCLUDE", $env:INCLUDE, [System.EnvironmentVariableTarget]::User )