How To Copy Environment Variables And Directory Structures (Wiki forum at Coderanch) (original) (raw)

Several of the entries in the HowToAskQuestionsOnJavaRanch FAQ recommend copying and pasting code and configuration settings into the edit screen instead of typing them.

Here are some tips for capturing system information such as environment variables and directory structures in a Windows environment.
This FAQ entry is aimed primarily at Windows users. Most modern Unix shell windows allow copying and pasting so the results from the "ls -R" and "echo" commands are easy to grab.
Copying an environment variable PATH, CLASSPATH, JAVA_HOME, etc..
For Windows (from the command line)

echo %CLASSPATH% > my-classpath.txt

This will open up a text file containing your CLASSPATH environment variable in notepad; where it will be easy to copy to your clipboard.

Copying a directory structure

In this example, we're going to write the entire directory structure of the "ROOT" webapp that
ships with Apache Tomcat (assuming that the current working directory is {tomcat install}\webapps):

dir /b /s ROOT > my-directory-structure.txt

When pasting the results into the JavaRanch edit screen be sure to UseCodeTags to insure that everything is rendered as plain text with all indenting preserved.

See the other tips on HowToAskQuestionsOnJavaRanch.