| FreeMat
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Section: Operating System Functions
The getenv function returns the value for an environment variable from the underlying OS. The syntax for the getenv function is 
y = getenv(environment_variable)
 where environment_variable is the name of the environment variable to return. The return is a string. 
Here is an example of using the getenv function to get the value for the HOME variable
--> getenv('HOME')
ans = 
/home/sbasu