Perforce 2009.2: Command Reference

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 in each OS and shell:

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's registry variables in Windows).

Perforce's environment variables can be loosely 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 of this variable is normally sufficient; it rarely needs to be changed.

•	Server: The variable is set by the Perforce system administrator on the machine running the Perforce server. Some of these variables are used by Perforce clients 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	P4PAGER PWD TMP, TEMP P4TICKETS P4LANGUAGE P4COMMANDCHARSET P4DIFFUNICODE P4MERGEUNICODE	P4AUDIT P4JOURNAL P4LOG P4PORT P4ROOT P4DEBUG P4NAME P4DESCRIPTION P4ZEROCONF