Issue with the use of environment variables

[charlie45000]

Hello,
I'm trying to switch from Xresources to rasi configuration and want to use environment variables.

I had some issues with it:

• It seems that it isn't possible to use all environment variables (for example path doesn't work)
• variables are not convertible to strings, so properties that expect a string fail to load it (it is a big problem with cache-dir)
• I don't know if it is possible to combine string and environment variables (for exemple $XDG_CACHE_HOME/rofi)

I don't know it it is a bug or if it is simply not possible at the moment (in this case, would it be possible to add it?)

Thank you for your help!

[DaveDavenport]

For strings your environment variable needs to contain "qoutes" around it, but should work.
Currently the env needs to contain a valid full property. If there is interest I will extend the support and see if I can add f.e. string appending.

Currently environment are parsed as followed

my {
aap : ${test}; 
}

or in 1.7.1:

my {
aap: env(test, "default");
}

Then test is parsed as the property value. Whatever you can have between : and ; normally can be in the env.

[infokiller]

@DaveDavenport I'm trying to use an environment variable for cache-dir but it doesn't work with "unexpected forward slash", presumably because rofi expands the environment variable verbatim and I need to use it as a string. I tried:

configuration {
	cache-dir: env(HOST_HIST_DIR, "~/.cache");
}

Also, how can I append another string to an environment variable? For example if I want to use ${HOST_HIST_DIR}/rofi as the value, how can this be done?

Thanks!

[DaveDavenport]

appending of string is not possible. (might be an idea to add, need to think about it.).

HOST_HIST_DIR indeed needs to be formatted as a string (so surrounded by "
So if you set the environemnet make sure it includes this.

export HOST_HIST_DIR=\"/tmp\"

might work.

This is kind of a limitation of the system. The configuration lexer needs to know the data type, it does this based on the content.