Windows XP also includes a number of variables to help control and define the user environment. The %username% can be used in place of the currently logged on user, because it will be populated with that value automatically. This comes in handy if you were writing a logon script, and wanted to use the same script for multiple users. For example, the command net use g: \\server1\users\%username% could be used to map drive G: to a folder with the same name as the logged on user. This will save the time and effort associated with creating many individual scripts for different users.
Other useful user-related variables include %userprofile% (try issuing the command cd %userprofile% from the command line C:\> prompt), which was discussed earlier, and %userdomain%, which will return the name of the domain of which the current user is a member. For example, at the command line type echo %userdomain%, and the name of the domain (or computer) that validated the user’s logon request will be displayed.
