Modifying Environmental Parameters

The environment record maintained for each user controls a great deal of Advanced Revelation's system behavior. By changing the appropriate value in the environment record, you can change system behavior.

In most cases changing the environment record in memory (@ENVIRON.SET) is enough to achieve the desired result. For example, to turn off access to TCL execute an R/BASIC program that contains the following line of code:

@ENVIRON.SET<38> = ""

To turn TCL on, set field 38 to 1.

The complete layout of @ENVIRON.SET can be found in the ENVIRON.CONSTANTS record of the INCLUDE file.

As with every good rule, there are exceptions. Some environment parameters are used during the log in procedure to initialize system variables. To change these values you must update the system variables directly, not @ENVIRON.SET. Figure 1 contains a list of these variables, their environment positions, and their functions.

For example, to change the initial index timeout delay, @INDEX.TIME, to 20 seconds you would do this:

  @INDEX.TIME = 20

not this:

  @ENVIRON.SET<29> = 20