path variables

I'm looking for an explanation to what appears to be some kind of shell substitution values found in various path environment variables such as PATH, CDPATH, MANPATH, etc. These values appear as things like %T, %S, %N, %L. I'm not sure what these mean, and have searched through a multitude of man pages looking for some sort of explanation. I don't know if they are related specifically to the shell, the OS, or the path variable itself. What I would like to know is, what do these mean, and what are all the possible values? Better yet, what documentation or man pages talk about these so I can read about these myself? Here are some examples of how I've seen these values used.

export CDPATH=:/${HOME}\
:/some_directory_path/some_subdirectory\
:/another_directory_path/another_subdirectory/%N

export SCHEMESEARCHPATH=/net/${DEFAULTHOST}/~/%T/%N%S\
:/usr/atria/config/ui/Schemes/%N%S

Those look like NLS substitutions, ie, the path changes depending on the language. Of course the code doing the lookup needs to do the substitution.

If, by "NLS", you mean, "Native Language Support", then what do these substitutions mean in the english language?

If the substitutions are being handled by the code that uses a particular path variable, then, for example, why doesn't the man page for the cd command (which uses the CDPATH variable) talk about its possible substitution values and what they mean?

Which operating system are you refering to?

I am not suggesting all paths depend on NLS.

Solaris 10, and I typically use the Korn shell.

Try starting here

Solaris Common Desktop Environment: Advanced User's and System Administrator's Guide

I noted the environment is quite different between an SSH login and an CDE session and that XFILESEARCHPATH had the parameters as you mention.

That seems to be of some help. Thank you.