Cannot pass environment variables containing ";" via job submit

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 19:59:35 Z

I have a cluster with Windows HPC Server 2008 and Microsoft HPC Pack. I am trying to submit a job using the "job submit" command that needs to set an environment variable with semi-colon delimited values for each task. I have tried the following alternatives, but each of them fails in the same manner:
Microsoft Windows [Version 6.0.6001]
Copyright (c) 2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

C:\Users\XXXXX>job submit /env:key="value1;value2" dir
Bad format for 'env' parameter. Should be /env:name=value;*

C:\Users\XXXXX>job submit /env:"key=value1;value2" dir
Bad format for 'env' parameter. Should be /env:name=value;*

C:\Users\XXXXX>job submit /env:key=value1;value2 dir
Bad format for 'env' parameter. Should be /env:name=value;*

Could someone please let me know what I am doing incorrectly? The error message is quite incomprehensible and the documentation did not address this problem.

Cannot pass environment variables containing ";" via job submit

Fri, 17 Apr 2009 19:04:02 Z

I believe you're not doing anything wrong, because the "job submit" command seems to use the ";" as a string delimiter while parsing the argument /env. I guess it's just impossible that way. Maybe you could try to add the set variable command to your commandline string e.g. like this:

job submit set key=value1;value2 ^&^& dir

Make sure to mask the "&" with "^" because otherwise the dir command would be executed directly after your submission command in the local shell.
Hope this helps.

- Michael

Cannot pass environment variables containing ";" via job submit

Sat, 02 May 2009 00:28:40 Z

This issue should be fixed in SP1. However, you might try using the SetEnvironmentVariable method in the Scheduler API as that might work.

Cannot pass environment variables containing ";" via job submit

Tue, 05 May 2009 18:24:08 Z

Thank you, that was indeed helpful.

Cannot pass environment variables containing ";" via job submit

Tue, 05 May 2009 18:28:34 Z

Thank you, I will wait for SP1 and use the previous workaround meanwhile. I would have preferred to use the Scheduler API, but cannot because I am submitting jobs from a Python application.