Patent ID: 7000222

Claim:
A method for accessing variables from an operating system, comprising: receiving a command from an application program for at least one variable maintained by the operating system; determining whether the at least one variable is in a data object; if the at least one variable is in the data object, returning the at least one variable to the application program; and if the at least one variable is not in the data object, executing the command from the application program to store at least one variable maintained by the operating system in the data object accessible to the application program, wherein the application program is executing on the operating system by: determining a type of the operating system; selecting the operating system native command from a set of native operating system commands for different types of operating systems, wherein the selected operating system native command is capable of being executed on the operating system to retrieve the at least one variable, and wherein the application program is capable of executing on each of the different types of operating systems; executing the selected operating system native command in response to the command from the application program to retrieve the at least one variable into a buffer; storing the retrieved at least one variable from the buffer into the data object; and executing the command from the application program to retrieve the at least one variable from the data object for return to the application program.