If you are a geek that have experience in Linux, you will know exactly what I’m talking about. If not, environment variables is an essential piece of variables that exists so your system can function correctly. The same applies in Windows, though, normal Windows users don’t need to worry their environment variables. 

Recently, I was looking at some android documentation and try to setup a development environment on my Windows 7. One of the step is to add a directory path into the PATH environment variable, you have to admit Google didn’t put much effort in to the documentation. It says

To install the SDK, simply unpack the starter package to a safe location and then add the location to your PATH.

No explanation on how to do this.

So how exactly are you going to do this ?

To add or edit anything environment variables in your Windows 7 you need to first go to System properties

Go to “Advanced system settings”

Go under “Advanced” tab > “Environment Variables …”

Go to PATH > double click and add new path into the “variable value” make sure you separate the value with “ ; “

Let’s sum up what we just did

PATH is an environment variable that holds all the executable shell commands, when you type some thing in the command prompt it will go through all the path and search for the match of the command line utility name you have just entered.

In short there are tons other environment variables in Windows, if you are interested in how it works feel free to check out the Technet documentation.