Message-ID: <4DF4FDAC.8010809@web.de>
Date: Sun, 12 Jun 2011 19:55:56 +0200
From: Roland Bluethgen <calocybe AT web DOT de>
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To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: TMP and TEMP get redefined, but I need the original values
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Hey folks!

I don't update my Cygwin installation regularly, but recently I did, and 
then a script of mine stopped working.

Looking for the cause I found out that the Cygwin maintainers chose to 
redefine the TEMP and TMP environment variables in /etc/profile like this:

unset TMP TEMP
TMP="/tmp"
TEMP="/tmp"

http://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2011-03/msg00211.html

Before that change, the TMP and TEMP defined by Windows were used 
unmodified (except for cygpath translation). I'm sure the maintainers 
have good reasons for this change. However, now I'm unable to find out 
the original TEMP setting from a script.

To help your imagination what this could be good for, the purpose of the 
script in question is for aiding in Windows maintenance, specifically 
for cleaning up the TEMP folder.

I helped myself by deactivating the lines cited above in /etc/profile 
for now, but that is clearly not a fine solution. Well, I could store 
the original values of TMP and TEMP in backup variables, like 
WINDOWS_TEMP or so. That would have to go in /etc/profile before the 
variables are unset. But then, this modification would probably get 
overwritten the next time something is changed in that file on the 
distribution side. (If it would not, I wouldn't have had the problem in 
the first place.)

So, any ideas how this could be solved in a clean way?

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