Environment Variables

All directory names may contain macros that are expanded during synchronization. Begin and end of each macro is marked by a '%' character. Besides special macros handling time and date (see "Backup Strategies"), the operating system's environment variables can also be used.

Example:

• C:\Backup\%USERNAME%_Config expands to
  C:\Backup\ZenJu_Config

• %APPDATA%\FreeFileSync      expands to
  C:\Documents and Settings\ZenJu\Application Data\FreeFileSync

Hint:

You can add a great amount of flexibility to Batch Synchronization (*.ffs_batch) by creating new temporary environment variables in a *.bat/*.cmd file that are evaluated by FreeFileSync at runtime!

Example:

The batch configuration file C:\SyncJob.ffs_batch contains macro %MyVar% instead of an absolute target directory and is invoked by a *.cmd file:

set MyVar=C:\Target
cd "C:\Program files\FreeFileSync"
FreeFileSync.exe C:\SyncJob.ffs_batch (->%MyVar% is replaced by C:\Target during execution)

Note:
Temporary environment variables created with the "set" command are only valid if the batch job is started by calling the executable directly! Using "start /wait" or relying on Shell Execute creates a new program context without these temporal variables.