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.
Crucial Variables Useful Variables Esoteric Variables Server Variables

P4CLIENT

P4PORT

P4PASSWD

P4USER

P4CONFIG

P4DIFF

P4EDITOR

P4MERGE

P4CHARSET

P4TRUST

P4PAGER

PWD

TMP, TEMP

P4TICKETS

P4LANGUAGE

P4LOGINSSO

P4COMMANDCHARSET

P4DIFFUNICODE

P4MERGEUNICODE

P4CLIENTPATH

P4AUDIT

P4JOURNAL

P4LOG

P4PORT

P4ROOT

P4DEBUG

P4NAME

P4SSLDIR

Notes

The $home placeholder may be used in any Perforce environment setting and will be expanded to the full path of the user’s home directory. This is taken from the HOME environment variable on all platforms expect for Windows, where USERPROFILE is used instead.