is classpath an environment variable?

[ganapathy gopinathan]

Hi all,

Anyone plz, help me to know whether the 'classpath' is an environment variable?
if so, what is environment variable?

Thank u,
gopinathan

[Peter van der Linden]

Yes, classpath is typically implemented by an environment variable.

Environment variables are an "operating system thing" not a "java thing".
But they are quite like variables in a programming language.

You give a value to an environment variable using the command line interface,
and the operating system can use the variable instead of a fixed literal value.

For example, there is an env. variable called PATH in most operating systems.
It holds a string of directory names that list the places to look for executable
files when you type a command name at the command line. CLASSPATH was
name as an analogy to this.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environment_variable for more information.

Actually, that Wiki is a great place to search first when questions like this come
into your mind. You'll get a better answer more quickly, and if you can't find or
understand the answer you can always post a more tightly focused question here.

Cheers!

Peter