/*
 *  Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
 *  contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file distributed with
 *  this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
 *  The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0
 *  (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with
 *  the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
 *
 *      http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
 *
 *  Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
 *  distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
 *  WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
 *  See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
 *  limitations under the License.
 *
 */
package org.apache.ivy.core.settings;

/**
 * Store and provide access to the ivy variables.
 */
public interface IvyVariableContainer extends Cloneable {

    public void setVariable(String varName, String value, boolean overwrite);

    public String getVariable(String name);

    /**
     * Specifies the prefix used to indicate a variable is an environment variable. If the prefix
     * doesn't end with a '.', it will be added automatically.
     * 
     * @param prefix
     *            the prefix to use for the environment variables
     */
    public void setEnvironmentPrefix(String prefix);

    public Object clone();
}
