How to read Windows environment variable value?

Try using the following:

os.getenv('MyVar')

From the documentation:

os.getenv(varname[, value])

Return the value of the environment variable varname if it exists, or value if it doesn’t. value defaults to None.

Availability: most flavors of Unix, Windows

So after testing it:

>>> import os
>>> os.environ['MyVar'] = 'Hello World!'       # set the environment variable 'MyVar' to contain 'Hello World!'
>>> print os.getenv('MyVar')
Hello World!
>>> print os.getenv('not_existing_variable')
None
>>> print os.getenv('not_existing_variable', 'that variable does not exist')
that variable does not exist
>>> print os.environ['MyVar']
Hello World!
>>> print os.environ['not_existing_variable']
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/UserDict.py", line 17, in __getitem__
    def __getitem__(self, key): return self.data[key]
KeyError: 'not_existing_variable    

Your method would work too if the environmental variable exists. The difference with using os.getenv is that it returns None (or the given value), while os.environ['MyValue'] gives a KeyError exception when the variable does not exist.

You might have to restart windows to be able to read the environment variable that you set through the control panel.

os.getenv('PATH')

You can test it with the above line of code. It will list all the paths which are set.