Environment and Registry Variables

Each operating system and shell has its own syntax for setting environment variables.The following table shows how to set the P4CLIENT environment variable on various systems:

OS or Shell Environment Variable Example

UNIX: ksh, sh, bash

P4CLIENT=value ; export P4CLIENT

UNIX: csh

setenv P4CLIENT value

VMS

def/j P4CLIENT "value"

Mac OS X (bash)

P4CLIENT=value ; export P4CLIENT

Windows

p4 set P4CLIENT=value

Windows administrators running Perforce as a service can set variables for use by a specific service with p4 set -S svcname var=value, or set variables for all users on the local machine with p4 set -s var=value.

(See the p4 set command for more details on setting Perforce variables in Windows and OS X).

Note

You may use $home to set environment variables. For example:

P4IGNORE=$home/myignorefile

$home is expanded to the path of the user’s home directory. The user’s home directory is taken to be the value of the HOME environment variable or of USERPROFILE on Windows.

Perforce’s environment variables can be grouped into the following four categories:

  • Crucial: The variable must almost always be set on the client; default values are rarely sufficient. Understanding these variables is crucial for users and administrators alike.
  • Useful: Setting this variable can provide additional functionality to the user, but is not required for most Perforce operations.
  • Esoteric: The default value is normally sufficient; it rarely needs to be changed.
  • Server: The variable is set by the Perforce system administrator on the machine that hosts the Perforce service. Some of these variables are used by Perforce applications as well; in these cases, the variable is listed twice.