CleanerML variables reference

BleachBit supports several kinds of variables for use in writing cleaning rules. It is a best practice to use variables rather than hard-coding paths that vary across systems. Common paths may change depending on the user logged in, the version of Windows, and the user’s language. For example, the Windows %ProgramFiles% is usually on the C: drive, but on some systems it is on the D: drive.

Use variables in any part of CleanerML and winapp2.ini that refers to a file path.

Home

Write ~ to refer to the user’s profile directory. While this is a Unix convention, BleachBit supports it also on Windows.

Example: ~/.bashrc

Environment variables

Use any environment variables defined in the operating system.

On Unix systems, BleachBit supports the styles $foo$ and ${foo}. It is a best practice to use the XDG Base Directory Specification.

Example: $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/google-chrome

On Windows, BleachBit supports the Unix-style above and the Windows-style %foo%.

Example: %LocalAppData%\Google\Chrome\User Data

The most common Windows environment variables are %AppData%, %LocalAppData%, %ProgramFiles%, and %UserProfile%. For more information, see Wikipedia’s article “Environment variable”.

Defined by BleachBit

In addition to the environment variables defined by the operating system, BleachBit defines environment variables for convenience and compatibility.

Linux

On Linux, these variables are defined if they do not exist:

  • XDG_DATA_HOME: typically ~/.local/share
  • XDG_CONFIG_HOME: typically ~/.config
  • XDG_CACHE_HOME: typically ~/.cache

Windows

On Windows, the following are defined if they do not exist:

  • cd: current directory
  • CommonAppData
  • Documents
  • LocalAppData
  • LocalAppDataLow
  • Music
  • Pictures
  • Video

The variable %ProgramFiles% can behave in an unexpected way because 64-bit Windows will modify it for 32-bit applications, and BleachBit is a 32-bit application. To refer to the 64-bit folder on 64-bit Windows, use %ProgramW6432% instead. For more information, see Microsoft’s article “WOW64 Implementation Details”.

For compatibility with Winapp2, BleachBit expands %ProgramFiles% to %ProgramW6432% as if both were written. Likewise, BleachBit expands %CommonProgramFiles% to %CommonProgramW6432%. This expansion is not supported in CleanerML.

Multi-value variables

BleachBit supports a feature called multi-value variables in CleanerML. Within each cleaner, a variable can be defined with multiple values. This greatly simplifies the development and maintenance of cleaners with path variations for operating system and for application derivatives such as Google Chrome and Chromium.

The syntax to use a multi-value variable is $$foo$$ on both Linux and Windows. Multi-value variable names are case-sensitive, and values can contain environment variables. See the Adobe Flash cleaner (flash.xml) for a basic example.

BleachBit defines default variables on Windows:

  • $$ProgramFiles$$ expands to both %ProgramFiles% and %ProgramW6432%
  • $$CommonProgramFiles$$ expands to both %CommonProgramFiles% and %CommonProgramW6432%