Michael - I hadn't seen that (why?) - and my supposition about 3.5 vs 4.0 Framework was right.
Since I need to use v3.5, I'll work with ExpandEnvironmentVariables. Thanks! _____ Ian Thomas Victoria Park, Western Australia _____ From: ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] On Behalf Of Michael Minutillo Sent: Wednesday, February 08, 2012 4:46 PM To: ozDotNet Subject: Re: Environment variable ProgramFilesx86 - for x86 on 64-bit Windows Hi Ian, If all you want to do is start a process in code you can use the Environment.ExpandEnvironmentVariables(..) method to do it for you: Environment.ExpandEnvironmentVariables("%ProgramFiles(x86)%\\TextPad 5\\TextPad.exe") Returns C:\Program Files (x86)\TextPad 5\TextPad.exe on my machine. If you reference an environment variable that doesn't exist then it just doesn't get expanded. Regards, Michael M. Minutillo Indiscriminate Information Sponge http://codermike.com On Wed, Feb 8, 2012 at 4:36 PM, Ian Thomas <il.tho...@iinet.net.au> wrote: Is there an environment variable ProgramFilesx86 to locate C:\Program Files (x86) on a 64-bit Windows? Although some of the MSDN documentation specifically mentions an environment variable ProgramFilesX96 member in the Environment.SpecialFolder Enumeration (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.environment.specialfolder.as px ), it isn't shown by intellisense - Environment.GetFolderPath(System.Environment.SpecialFolder.ProgramFilesx86) and doesn't compile. Further, while I can use the Windows Run to expand %ProgramFiles(x86)% - "%ProgramFiles(x86)%\TextPad 5\TextPad.exe" -m -r "C:\Users\(some location)\MyApp.log" will work as desired, for example - if I want to start a process in code it doesn't expand the environment variable - MyProcess.StartInfo.Filename = "%ProgramFiles(x86)%\TextPad 5\TextPad.exe" (fails) I am using 3.5 Framework, and need to remain with this. Maybe in 4.0 the doco is correct and this works (have not tried) - or am I missing a few very obvious things? _____ Ian Thomas Victoria Park, Western Australia
