Get unresolved/raw environment variable

[ShadowLocke]

My PATH variable contains other enviornment variables. For example: My PATH is "%SOME_PATH%; C:\windows\ ..." and i have the varibale "SOME_PATH" which is.."C:\SomePath"..

When i run this code:

 
using (Microsoft.Win32.RegistryKey l_key = Microsoft.Win32.Registry.LocalMachine.OpenSubKey(@"System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Environment", false))
{
return (l_key.GetValue("PATH") as String);
}
 

I get "C:\SomePath;C:\windows\ ..." instead of "%SOME_PATH%; C:\windows\ ..."

How do i get the unresolved environment variable?

[Curtis Rutland]

Does Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("path") work for you?

[ShadowLocke]

@insertAlias
It does not. It returns the expanded value. I noticed I forgot to mention in my post I was using .Net 1.1. Shortly after posting I found that RegistryKey.GetValue had an overload that takes Microsoft.Win32.RegistryValueOptions that can have the value of DoNotExpandEnvironmentNames. Exactly what i was looking for...except it doesnt exist in .Net 1.1. Heres the code i finally came around to that works in 1.1: (partialy stripped from .Net 2.0)

 
[DllImport("advapi32.dll", CharSet = CharSet.Unicode, EntryPoint = "RegQueryValueExW", SetLastError = true)]
static extern int RegQueryValueEx(IntPtr hKey, string lpValueName, int lpReserved, out uint lpType, System.Text.StringBuilder lpData, ref uint lpcbData); 
 

 
new System.Security.Permissions.EnvironmentPermission(System.Security.Permissions.PermissionState.Unrestricted).Demand();
using (Microsoft.Win32.RegistryKey l_key = Microsoft.Win32.Registry.LocalMachine.OpenSubKey(@"System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Environment", false))
{
System.Reflection.FieldInfo l_reg_info = l_key.GetType().GetFields(System.Reflection.BindingFlags.NonPublic | System.Reflection.BindingFlags.Instance)[0];
IntPtr lp_hklm = (IntPtr)l_reg_info.GetValue(l_key);
uint lui_buffer = 0;
System.Text.StringBuilder ls_ret = null;
uint lui_type = 0;
RegQueryValueEx(lp_hklm, as_variable, 0, out lui_type, ls_ret, ref lui_buffer);
ls_ret = new System.Text.StringBuilder((int)lui_buffer);
int success = RegQueryValueEx(lp_hklm, as_variable, 0, out lui_type, ls_ret, ref lui_buffer);
 
if (success == 0)
return ls_ret.ToString();
else
throw new Exception("Error reading enviornment variable " + as_variable);
}
 

note: this only works for machine level environment variables