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Assign empty system variable using setx

I need a system variable and assign an empty string value to it. I've tried

setx samplepassword ""

But upon echo %samplepassword% , what should be an empty string is instead %samplepassword%. Now I found this in the docs

Setting value of "" (empty quotes) will appear to delete the variable - it's not shown by SET but the variable name will remain in the registry.

http://ss64.com/nt/setx.html

How can I assign an empty system variable using setx?

Update: I have checked the environment variables via the Windows GUI: Control Panel | System | Advanced | Environment Variables and saw that the DB_PASSWORD was indeed initialized with an empty string value. But why does executing echo %samplepassword% give me the above output? I have opened a new instance of cmd to be precise.

Solution

  • I think you have a misconception here. There is no way to assign an "empty string" to an environment (Batch) variable. The command set "samplepassword=" deletes the variable, so echo "%samplepassword%" just show "". You don't need setx command to do that, nor setx can modify this behavior. – Aacini Aug 9 at 4:39

    TL;DR: Technically it is not possible to create an empty variable in the environment. – Aacini