What does the $ and % do?

[IntelliQ]

Just curious as to what the dollar and percent sign do when attaching them to folder or path names, i.e. $INSTALL, or $1, and also %SYSTEMDRIVE% . I faithfully have followed the guide like a good monkey, without understanding parts of it. (I did do a quick search on google on this, but too much VBS and other stuff popped up). Anyone have a nice link that describes these things to noobs?

Also, Im almost finished with my XP_CD and am trying to understand how I am supposed to extract my winrar (SFX) file with all of my apps in it when installing.

I searched through this forum for "unrar.exe" and little is explained about the syntax and the extraction path, except that one poster said to extract it to the

%userprofie%. Is this the best place for them? And how do I clean them up silently afterward? Honestly, i tried to piece these answers together for myself before asking.

I expect to test my CD in a day or two....(crossing fingers)

[edg21]

In my cd I have \$oem$\$$\system32\unrar.exe by placing unrar here, windows setup copies the file during installation.

my apps are located here:

\$oem$\$1\install\apps.rar

command line I use to extract:

unrar x %systemdrive%\install\apps.rar %systemdrive%\install

then I run my apps.cmd file to install my applications

[b0r3d]

%SYSTEMDRIVE% is a variable used by windows. Variables are indicated by the % symbol.

The %SYSTEMDRIVE% variable will take you to the drive that windows is installed on, no matter the drive letter. (Because some funny people like to install Windows on drives other than C:)

Windows has many other variables for reasons such as this.