#648 Expansion of environment variables

[Adrian Wilkins]

This is a superset of 1120924.

It would be most useful if path handlers in the 7-zip file manager were capable of expanding environment variables.

e.g. Download an eclipse SDK

You want to unpack the folder to your windows program files folder

typing

%programfiles%

Is easier and more consistent than

c:\Program Files\

[Synetech]

Eleven years later, and this is still missing (from version 18.05). 😒

Open an archive, then press F5 to show the extract dialog, and type %temp% in the directory field. Proper programs will automatically (internally) expand that to the temp directory, but 7-Zip tries to create a folder named %temp%, and inside the archive file no less (which of course fails).

What is the hold up? Why should users have to go to all the extra trouble of manually typing in long, arbitrary paths instead of just using environment variables like they were meant? What is so difficult in calling ExpandEnvironmentStrings?

Sorry to be hard, but this is a very basic function of any program and is still missing. I can’t even remember the number of times I have frustratedly had to manually type in the long path to the temp directory.