How to check for $ProgramFiles(x86) ?

[Timothy Madden]

Hello

I am trying to see if the current system is 32-bit or 64-bit Windows. On
64-bit Windows the environment variable $ProgramFiles(x86) is known to
exits, but Vim will just check for $ProgramFiles and the appendthe
'(x86)' part. Is there a way to check if the environment variable
$ProgramFiles(x86) exists in the current environment ?

I tried both expand('$ProgramFiles(x86)') and
exists('$ProgramFiles(x86)'), both of them check the '$ProgamFiles' part
only.

Thank you,
Timothy Madden

[Gerald Klein]

What your doing I would think would work, but check in the system applet in control panel. 

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[Ben Fritz]

:help expand-environment-var says that only letters, digits, and _ are allowed in the environment variable name. I am not sure whether there is a workaround.

Perhaps Vim needs to allow a different set of characters for Windows environment variables, or some way to escape the characters to indicate they are part of the name.

[Gary Johnson]

I think the following or a variation should do it. I was only able
to test it on names without parentheses as I didn't see any variable
names with them in my environment.

split(system('set ProgramFiles(x86)', '=')[1]

gets the value and

system('set ProgramFiles(x86)') =~ 'not defined'

will evaluate to true if the variable is not defined.

Regards,
Gary

[Ben Fritz]

On Wednesday, October 24, 2012 4:25:41 PM UTC-5, Gary Johnson wrote:
>
> I think the following or a variation should do it. I was only able
> to test it on names without parentheses as I didn't see any variable
> names with them in my environment.
>
> split(system('set ProgramFiles(x86)', '=')[1]
>
> gets the value and
>
> system('set ProgramFiles(x86)') =~ 'not defined'
>
> will evaluate to true if the variable is not defined.
>

Not quite. You get hit by Windows *#$&#ing command-line quoting.

This works for me:

:echo system('set PROGRAMFILES^(x86^)')

[George V. Reilly]

In the past, I've solved very similar problems with batch files [1]
and Bash scripts [2].
The parentheses in the environment variable name are asinine.

[1] http://weblogs.asp.net/george_v_reilly/archive/2009/09/11/launching-32-bit-applications-from-batchfiles-on-win64.aspx
@setlocal
@set _pf=%ProgramFiles%
@if not "[%ProgramFiles(x86)%]"=="[]" set _pf=%ProgramFiles(x86)%
@start "" /b "%_pf%\SourceGear\DiffMerge\DiffMerge.exe" %*

[2] http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.gnu.mingw.user/31262/focus=31273
#!/bin/sh
pf=`env | sed -n s,'^PROGRAMFILES(X86)=',,p`
if [ -z "$pf" ]; then pf="$PROGRAMFILES"; fi
"$pf/SourceGear/DiffMerge/DiffMerge.exe" $*
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[Timothy Madden]

Thank you for your answers. I think a simple
let l:pf = system('Echo %ProgramFiles(x86)%')
if l:pf == '%ProgramFiles(x86)%'
...
will work well enough.

Thank you,
Timothy Madden

[John Little]

FWIW, on Unix if you manage to get such a variable into the environment (bash won't let you)

:echo libcall('', 'getenv', '$ProgramFiles(x86)')

will show it to you.

Surely, there's a better way.

Regards, John