How to check if directory exists in PATH

Question

How does one check if a directory is already present in the PATH environment variable  Here s a start  All I ve managed to do with the code below  though  is echo the first directory in  PATH   Since this is a FOR loop you d think it would enumerate all the directories in  PATH   but it only gets the first one    Is there a better way of doing this  Something like find or findstr operating on the  PATH  variable  I d just like to check if a directory exists in the list of directories in  PATH   to avoid adding something that might already be there   FOR  F  delims      P IN    PATH    DO        ECHO    P

User · Answer

You mention that you want to avoid adding the directory to search path if it already exists there. Is your intention to store the directory permanently to the path, or just temporarily for batch file's sake?

If you wish to add (or remove) directories permanently to PATH, take a look at Path Manager (pathman.exe) utility in Windows Resource Kit Tools for administrative tasks, http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927229. With that you can add or remove components of both system and user paths, and it will handle anomalies such as duplicate entries.

If you need to modify the path only temporarily for a batch file, I would just add the extra path in front of the path, with the risk of slight performance hit because of duplicate entry in the path.

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A comment to the  addPath  script  When supplying a path with spaces  it throws up   Example  call addPath  c  Program Files  x86  Microsoft SDKs Windows v7 0A Bin   yields   Files  is not recognized as an internal or external command  operable program or batch file

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I ve combined some of the above answers to come up with this to ensure that a given path entry exists exactly as given  with as much brevity as possible and no junk echos on the command line   set myPath  lt pathToEnsure    1 gt  echo   PATH     find  C  I    myPath     gt nul if  ERRORLEVEL  NEQ 0 set PATH  PATH   myPath

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You can also use substring replacement to test for the presence of a substring   Here I remove quotes to create PATH NQ  then I remove  c  mydir  from the PATH NQ and compare it to the original to see if anything changed   set PATH NQ  PATH     if not   PATH NQ      PATH NQ c  mydir    goto already in path set PATH  PATH  c  mydir  already in path

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Add Directory to PATH if not already exists   set myPath c  mypath For  F  Delims     I In   echo  PATH     find  C  I   myPath     Do set pathExists   I 2 gt Nul If  pathExists   0  set PATH  myPath   PATH

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If your question was  why doesn t this cmd script fragment work   then the answer is that for  f iterates over lines   The delims split lines into fields  but you re only capturing the first field in   P   There is no way to capture an arbitrary number of fields with a for  f loop

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Just as an alternative    In the folder you are going to search the PATH variable for  create a temporary file with such an unusual name that you would never ever expect any other file on your computer to have  Use the standard batch scripting construct that lets you perform the search for a file by looking up a directory list defined by some environment variable  typically PATH   Check if the result of the search matches the path in question  and display the outcome  Delete the temporary file    This might look like this    ECHO OFF SET  mypath D  the searched-for path  SET unusualname nowthisissupposedtobesomeveryunusualfilename ECHO  gt   mypath   unusualname   FOR   f IN   unusualname   DO SET  foundpath    dp PATH f  ERASE   mypath   unusualname   IF   mypath        foundpath       ECHO The dir exists in PATH   ELSE     ECHO The dir DOES NOT exist in PATH     Known issues    The method can work only if the directory exists  which isn t always the case   Creating   deleting files in a directory affects its  modified date time  attribute  which may be an undesirable effect sometimes   Making up a globally unique file name in one s mind cannot be considered very reliable  Generating such a name is itself not a trivial task

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-contains worked for me     pathToCheck    c  some path to a file txt    env Path - split     -contains  pathToCheck   To add the path when it does not exist yet I use   pathToCheck    c  some path to a file txt   if    env Path -split     -contains  vboxPath        documentsDir    Environment   GetFolderPath  MyDocuments      profileFilePath   Join-Path  documentsDir  WindowsPowerShell profile ps1    Out-File -FilePath  profileFilePath -Append -Force -Encoding ascii -InputObject    env Path        pathToCheck      Invoke-Expression -command  profileFilePath

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I haven t done any batch file programming in a while  but   echo   PATH     find  C  I    lt string gt      should give you 0 if string is not found and 1 or more if it is   EDIT   Added case-insensitive flag  thanks to Panos

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This version works fairly well   It simply checks whether vim71 is in the path  and prepends it if not    echo off echo  PATH    find  c  i  vim71   gt  nul if not errorlevel 1 goto jump PATH   C  Program Files Vim vim71   PATH   jump   This demo is to illustrate the errorlevel logic    echo on echo  PATH    find  c  i  Windows  if   errorlevel     0  echo Found Windows echo  PATH    find  c  i  Nonesuch  if   errorlevel     0  echo Found Nonesuch   The logic is reversed in the vim71 code since errorlevel 1 is equivalent to errorlevel    1  It follows that errorlevel 0 would always evaluate true  so  not errorlevel 1  is used   Postscript Checking may not be necessary if you use setlocal and endlocal to localise your environment settings  e g    echo off setlocal PATH   C  Program Files Vim vim71   PATH  rem your code here endlocal   After endlocal you are back with your original path

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After reading the answers here I think I can provide a new point of view  if the purpose of this question is to know if the path to a certain executable file exists in  PATH  and if not  insert it  and this is the only reason to do that  I think   then it may solved in a slightly different way   How to check if the directory of a certain executable program exist in  PATH    This question may be easily solved this way   for   p in  programname exe  do set  progpath     PATH p  if not defined progpath      rem The path to programname exe don t exist in PATH variable  insert it     set  PATH  PATH  C  path to progranname      If you don t know the extension of the executable file  just review all of them   set  progpath   for   e in   PATHEXT   do      if not defined progpath         for   p in  programname   e  do set  progpath     PATH p

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Building on rcar s answer  you have to make sure a substring of the target isn t found   if a X   a PATH  echo  X  is in PATH echo  PATH    find  c  i    X   if errorlevel 1 echo  X  is in PATH echo  PATH    find  c  i   X    if errorlevel 1 echo  X  is in PATH

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You can accomplish this using PoweShell   Test-Path  ENV SystemRoot YourDirectory Test-Path C  Windows YourDirectory   This returns TRUE or FALSE  Short  simle and easy

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I took your implementation using the for loop and extended it into something that iterates through all elements of the path   Each iteration of the for loop removes the first element of the path   p  from the entire path  held in  q and  r     echo off SET MYPATHCOPY  PATH    search for  f  delims   tokens 1 2     p in    MYPATHCOPY    do       echo    p    SET MYPATHCOPY    q    r    if   MYPATHCOPY        goto done  goto search    done   Sample output   Z   gt path bat C  Program Files Microsoft DirectX SDK  November 2007  Utilities Bin x86 c  program files imagemagick-6 3 4-q16 C  WINDOWS system32 C  WINDOWS C  SFU common  c  Program Files Debugging Tools for Windows C  Program Files Nmap

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Using for and delims  you cannot capture an arbitrary number of fields  as Adam pointed out as well  so you have to use a looping technique instead  The following command script will list each path in the PATH environment variable on a separate line    echo off  setlocal  if    1            set PATHQ  PATH    else       set PATHQ   1     WHILE     if   PATHQ       goto WEND     for  F  delims      i in    PATHQ    do echo   i     for  F  delims   tokens 1      i in    PATHQ    do set PATHQ   j     goto WHILE   WEND   It simulates a classical while   wend construct found in many programming languages  With this in place  you can use something like findstr to subsequently filter and look for a particular path  For example  if you saved the above script in a file called tidypath cmd then here is how you could pipe to findstr  looking for paths under the standard programs directory  using a case-insensitive match     gt  tidypath   findstr  i   ProgramFiles

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In general this is to put an exe dll on the path  As long as this file wont appear anywhere else    echo off where  q  lt put filename here gt      if  errorlevel     1       setx PATH   PATH   lt additional path stuff gt     else       echo  already set path

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First I will point out a number of issues that make this problem difficult to solve perfectly  Then I will present the most bullet-proof solution I have been able to come up with   For this discussion I will use lower case path to represent a single folder path in the file system  and upper case PATH to represent the PATH environment variable   From a practical standpoint  most people want to know if PATH contains the logical equivalent of a given path  not whether PATH contains an exact string match of a given path  This can be problematic because    The trailing   is optional in a path Most paths work equally well both with and without the trailing    The path logically points to the same location either way  The PATH frequently has a mixture of paths both with and without the trailing    This is probably the most common practical issue when searching a PATH for a match    There is one exception  The relative path C   meaning the current working directory of drive C  is very different than C    meaning the root directory of drive C    Some paths have alternate short names Any path that does not meet the old 8 3 standard has an alternate short form that does meet the standard  This is another PATH issue that I have seen with some frequency  particularly in business settings  Windows accepts both   and   as folder separators within a path  This is not seen very often  but a path can be specified using   instead of   and it will function just fine within PATH  as well as in many other Windows contexts  Windows treats consecutive folder separators as one logical separator  C  FOLDER   and C  FOLDER  are equivalent  This actually helps in many contexts when dealing with a path because a developer can generally append   to a path without bothering to check if the trailing   already exists  But this obviously can cause problems if trying to perform an exact string match    Exceptions  Not only is C   different than C    but C    a valid path   is different than C     an invalid path     Windows trims trailing dots and spaces from file and directory names   C  test    is equivalent to  C  test   The current    and parent     folder specifiers may appear within a path Unlikely to be seen in real life  but something like C    parent child      child  is equivalent to C  parent child A path can optionally be enclosed within double quotes  A path is often enclosed in quotes to protect against special characters like  lt space gt         amp     Actually any number of quotes can appear before  within  and or after the path  They are ignored by Windows except for the purpose of protecting against special characters  The quotes are never required within PATH unless a path contains a    but the quotes may be present never-the-less  A path may be fully qualified or relative  A fully qualified path points to exactly one specific location within the file system  A relative path location changes depending on the value of current working volumes and directories  There are three primary flavors of relative paths      D  is relative to the current working directory of volume D   myPath is relative to the current working volume  could be C   D  etc   myPath is relative to the current working volume and directory     It is perfectly legal to include a relative path within PATH  This is very common in the Unix world because Unix does not search the current directory by default  so a Unix PATH will often contain     But Windows does search the current directory by default  so relative paths are rare in a Windows PATH    So in order to reliably check if PATH already contains a path  we need a way to convert any given path into a canonical  standard  form  The  s modifier used by FOR variable and argument expansion is a simple method that addresses issues 1 - 6  and partially addresses issue 7  The  s modifier removes enclosing quotes  but preserves internal quotes  Issue 7 can be fully resolved by explicitly removing quotes from all paths prior to comparison  Note that if a path does not physically exist then the  s modifier will not append the   to the path  nor will it convert the path into a valid 8 3 format   The problem with  s is it converts relative paths into fully qualified paths  This is problematic for Issue 8 because a relative path should never match a fully qualified path  We can use FINDSTR regular expressions to classify a path as either fully qualified or relative  A normal fully qualified path must start with  lt letter gt   lt separator gt  but not  lt letter gt   lt separator gt  lt separator gt   where  lt separator  is either   or    UNC paths are always fully qualified and must start with     When comparing fully qualified paths we use the  s modifier  When comparing relative paths we use the raw strings  Finally  we never compare a fully qualified path to a relative path  This strategy provides a good practical solution for Issue 8  The only limitation is two logically equivalent relative paths could be treated as not matching  but this is a minor concern because relative paths are rare in a Windows PATH   There are some additional issues that complicate this problem   9  Normal expansion is not reliable when dealing with a PATH that contains special characters   Special characters do not need to be quoted within PATH  but they could be  So a PATH like C  THIS  amp  THAT  C   amp  THE OTHER THING  is perfectly valid  but it cannot be expanded safely using simple expansion because both   PATH   and  PATH  will fail   10  The path delimiter is also valid within a path name A   is used to delimit paths within PATH  but   can also be a valid character within a path  in which case the path must be quoted  This causes a parsing issue   jeb solved both issues 9 and 10 at   39 Pretty print  39  windows  PATH  variable - how to split on   39    39  in CMD shell    So we can combine the  s modifier and path classification techniques along with my variation of jeb s PATH parser to get this nearly bullet proof solution for checking if a given path already exists within PATH  The function can be included and called from within a batch file  or it can stand alone and be called as its own inPath bat batch file  It looks like a lot of code  but over half of it is comments    echo off  inPath pathVar        Tests if the path stored within variable pathVar exists within PATH         The result is returned as the ERRORLEVEL        0 if the pathVar path is found in PATH        1 if the pathVar path is not found in PATH        2 if pathVar is missing or undefined or if PATH is undefined         If the pathVar path is fully qualified  then it is logically compared     to each fully qualified path within PATH  The path strings don t have     to match exactly  they just need to be logically equivalent         If the pathVar path is relative  then it is strictly compared to each     relative path within PATH  Case differences and double quotes are     ignored  but otherwise the path strings must match exactly       ------------------------------------------------------------------------       Error checking if    1      exit  b 2 if not defined   1 exit  b 2 if not defined path exit  b 2       Prepare to safely parse PATH into individual paths setlocal DisableDelayedExpansion set  var  path        set  var  var        set  var  var  amp    amp    set  var  var        set  var  var  lt    lt    set  var  var  gt    gt    set  var  var          set var  var       set  var  var     Q   set  var  var     S S   set  var  var          set  var  var        setlocal EnableDelayedExpansion set  var  var  Q    set  var  var  S S             Remove quotes from pathVar and abort if it becomes empty set  new    1      if not defined new exit  b 2       Determine if pathVar is fully qualified echo   new   findstr  i  r  c        a-zA-Z                                             c                  gt nul      amp  amp  set  abs 1     set  abs 0        For each path in PATH  check if path is fully qualified and then do    proper comparison with pathVar     Exit with ERRORLEVEL 0 if a match is found     Delayed expansion must be disabled when expanding FOR variables    just in case the value contains   for   A in    new     do for   B in    var    do     if          endlocal   for   C in      B    do       echo   B findstr  i  r  c        a-zA-Z                                             c                  gt nul          amp  amp   if  abs   1 if  i     sA       sC  exit  b 0              if  abs   0 if  i     A       C  exit  b 0           No match was found so exit with ERRORLEVEL 1 exit  b 1   The function can be used like so  assuming the batch file is named inPath bat    set test c  mypath call inPath test  amp  amp   echo found      echo not found      Typically the reason for checking if a path exists within PATH is because you want to append the path if it isn t there  This is normally done simply by using something like path  path   newPath   But Issue 9 demonstrates how this is not reliable   Another issue is how to return the final PATH value across the ENDLOCAL barrier at the end of the function  especially if the function could be called with delayed expansion enabled or disabled  Any unescaped   will corrupt the value if delayed expansion is enabled   These problems are resolved using an amazing safe return technique that jeb invented here  http   www dostips com forum viewtopic php p 6930 p6930   echo off  addPath pathVar  B        Safely appends the path contained within variable pathVar to the end     of PATH if and only if the path does not already exist within PATH         If the case insensitive  B option is specified  then the path is     inserted into the front  Beginning  of PATH instead         If the pathVar path is fully qualified  then it is logically compared     to each fully qualified path within PATH  The path strings are     considered a match if they are logically equivalent         If the pathVar path is relative  then it is strictly compared to each     relative path within PATH  Case differences and double quotes are     ignored  but otherwise the path strings must match exactly         Before appending the pathVar path  all double quotes are stripped  and     then the path is enclosed in double quotes if and only if the path     contains at least one semicolon         addPath aborts with ERRORLEVEL 2 if pathVar is missing or undefined     or if PATH is undefined       ------------------------------------------------------------------------       Error checking if    1      exit  b 2 if not defined   1 exit  b 2 if not defined path exit  b 2       Determine if function was called while delayed expansion was enabled setlocal set  NotDelayed          Prepare to safely parse PATH into individual paths setlocal DisableDelayedExpansion set  var  path        set  var  var        set  var  var  amp    amp    set  var  var        set  var  var  lt    lt    set  var  var  gt    gt    set  var  var          set var  var       set  var  var     Q   set  var  var     S S   set  var  var          set  var  var        setlocal EnableDelayedExpansion set  var  var  Q    set  var  var  S S             Remove quotes from pathVar and abort if it becomes empty set  new    1       if not defined new exit  b 2       Determine if pathVar is fully qualified echo   new   findstr  i  r  c        a-zA-Z                                             c                  gt nul      amp  amp  set  abs 1     set  abs 0        For each path in PATH  check if path is fully qualified and then    do proper comparison with pathVar  Exit if a match is found     Delayed expansion must be disabled when expanding FOR variables    just in case the value contains   for   A in    new     do for   B in    var    do     if          setlocal disableDelayedExpansion   for   C in      B    do       echo   B findstr  i  r  c        a-zA-Z                                             c                  gt nul          amp  amp   if  abs   1 if  i     sA       sC  exit  b 0              if  abs   0 if  i   A    C exit  b 0              Build the modified PATH  enclosing the added path in quotes    only if it contains   setlocal enableDelayedExpansion if   new      neq   new   set new   new   if  i    2     B   set  rtn  new   path    else set  rtn  path   new         rtn now contains the modified PATH  We need to safely pass the    value accross the ENDLOCAL barrier       Make rtn safe for assignment using normal expansion by replacing      and   with not yet defined FOR variables set  rtn  rtn      A   set  rtn  rtn     B         Escape   and   if function was called while delayed expansion was enabled     The trailing   in the second assignment is critical and must not be removed  if not defined NotDelayed set  rtn  rtn          if not defined NotDelayed set  rtn  rtn                  Pass the rtn value accross the ENDLOCAL barrier using FOR variables to    restore the   and   characters  Again the trailing   is critical  for  f  usebackq tokens 1 2    A in            do     endlocal  amp  endlocal  amp  endlocal  amp  endlocal  amp  endlocal   set  path  rtn       exit  b 0

User · Answer

Another way to check if something is in the path is to execute some innocent executable that is not going to fail if it s there  and check the result   As an example  next code snippet checks if maven is in the path   mvn --help  gt  NUL 2 gt  NUL  if errorlevel 1 goto mvnNotInPath   So I try to run mvn --help  ignore the output  don t actually want to see the help if maven is there     NUL   and also don t display the error message if maven was not found  2  NUL

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This routine will search for a path  or file ext in the path variable it returns 0 if found  Path  or file may contain spaces if quoted  If a variable is passed as the last argument it will be set to d  path file    echo off amp goto  PathCheck  PathCheck CMD echo PathCheck CMD  Checks for existence of a path or file in   PATH   variable echo Usage  PathCheck CMD  Checkpath  or  Checkfile   PathVar  echo Checkpath must have a trailing   but checkfile must not echo If Checkpath contains spaces use quotes ie   C  Check path   echo Checkfile must not include a path  just the filename ext echo If Checkfile contains spaces use quotes ie   Check File ext  echo Returns 0 if found  1 if not or -1 if checkpath does not exist at all echo If PathVar is not in command line it will be echoed with surrounding quotes echo If PathVar is passed it will be set to d  path checkfile with no trailing   echo Then   PathVar   will be set to the fully qualified path to Checkfile echo Note    PathVar   variable set will not be surrounded with quotes echo To view the path listing line by line use  PathCheck CMD  L exit b 1   PathCheck if    1      goto  PathCheck CMD setlocal EnableDelayedExpansion set  PathVar   2  set  pth   set  pcheck   1  if   pcheck  -1   equ         if not exist  pcheck  endlocal amp exit b -1   set a pth 1    for   G in    path          do     set  Pathfd    G     set  Pathfd  Pathfd          if  i   pcheck   equ   L  echo  Pathfd    if defined pth       if  i   pcheck   equ   Pathfd   endlocal amp exit b 0     else       if exist   Pathfd  pcheck   goto  CheckfileFound       endlocal amp exit b 1   CheckfileFound endlocal amp     if not   PathVar             call set    2  Pathfd  pcheck       else  echo   Pathfd  pcheck      exit b 0

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This will look for an exact but case-insensitive match  so mind any trailing backslashes etc    for  P in    path          do  if  i  P   PATH TO CHECK  echo  P exists in PATH   or  in a batch file  e g  checkpath bat  which takes an argument    for   P in    path          do  if  i   P     1  echo   P exists in PATH   In the latter form  one could call e g  checkpath   ProgramFiles   to see if the specified path already exists in PATH   Please note that this implementation assumes no semicolons or quotes are present inside a single path item

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Just to elaborate on Heyvoon s  2015 06 08  response using Powershell  this simple Powershell script should give you detail on  path    env Path -split             test-path            generating this kind of output which you can independently verify  True C  WINDOWS True C  WINDOWS system32 True C  WINDOWS System32 Wbem False C windows System32 windowsPowerShell v1 0  False C  Program Files  x86  Java jre7 bin   to reassemble for updating Path    x  null foreach   t in   env Path -split         if  test-path  t    x   t        x

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This is a variation to Kevin Edwards s answer using string replacement  The basic pattern is   IF   PATH new path         PATH   PATH  PATH  new path   For example   IF   PATH C  Scripts         PATH   PATH  PATH  C  Scripts   In a nutshell  we make a conditional test where we attempt to remove replace new path from our PATH environment variable  If new path doesn t exist the condition succeeds and the new path will be appended to PATH for the first time  If new path already exists then the condition fails and we will not add new path a second time

[windows] How to check if directory exists in %PATH%?

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