This 2015 article from Microsoft's Raymond Chen explains the historical reasons why Windows maintains both TMP and TEMP environment variables. The duplication stems from legacy compatibility with different applications that expected one or the other variable name. While both typically point to the same directory, understanding their origin provides insight into Windows' backward compatibility approach.
Background
Environment variables like TMP and TEMP are used by applications to locate temporary directories on Windows systems. The Old New Thing is a long-running Microsoft blog that explains Windows internals and historical design decisions.
- Source
- Hacker News (RSS)
- Published
- May 2, 2026 at 04:23 PM
- Score
- 5.0 / 10