[Feature Request] Add predefined variable with separator for environment variable PATH (also PYTHONPATH, CLASSPATH etc.)

[pawelszramowski]

I would like to request a new predefined variable, e.g. ${pathListSeparator}, that would be substituted with the separator used in the operating system's PATH environment variable, e.g. : for POSIX or ; for Windows.

Similarly to this feature request regarding ${pathSeparator}, I would also like it to have a shorter alias for improved readability, e.g. ${:}.

The variable could be used for modifications of not only the OS's PATH but also other environment variables that follow the same convention, e.g. Python's PYTHONPATH, Java's CLASSPATH, etc.

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🙂 This feature request received a sufficient number of community upvotes and we moved it to our backlog. To learn more about how we handle feature requests, please see our documentation.

Happy Coding!

[starball5]

Related: #143289

[pawelszramowski]

I think the shorter aliases I propose (${/} for ${pathSeparator} and ${:} for ${pathListSeparator} or whatever the new variable ends up being called) alleviate the readability concerns raised there, e.g. ${workspaceFolder}${/}path${/}to${/}dir${:}${env:PATH}.

I like the variable name proposed there (${pathListSeparator}) better than my original proposal (${searchPathSeparator}) since it doesn't include the pathSeparator string which is good for case-insensitive search so I edited the first message.