I guess I should cut my losses and move on. At this time I can't redesign the uplevel product to remove the operands from the variable names. Fortunately those names are acceptable in DOS batch. The next time I crack open that code I'll clean the variable names.

You'll see that I've added a trap to catch and ignore variable names which contain operands...my final code looks like this:

Code:
Break on

Color c+/n

$dummy = SetOption('novarsinstrings','on')
;$dummy = SetOption('explicit','on') -- can't use explicit without dimming each $var_name
$dummy = SetOption('wrapateol','on')

 If Open(1,'c:\temp\envars.bat') = 0

  $raw_line = Trim(SubStr(Lcase(ReadLine(1)),5))

   While @error = 0

    $var_name = ''
    $var_value = ''
    $dummy = ''

    ;provide special handling for ldap path
    If InStr($raw_line,'comppath')
     For Each $element in Split($raw_line,'comppath' + Chr(61))
      $var_name = 'comppath'
      $var_value = $element
     Next
     GoTo set_var
    EndIf

    For Each $element in Split($raw_line,Chr(61))
     Select
      Case $var_name = '' $var_name = $element
      Case $var_value = '' $var_value = $element
     EndSelect
    Next

    If InStr($var_name,'-')
     ? $var_name Color r+/n ' $var_name contains operand - skipped' Color c+/n
     GoTo next_line
    EndIf

    :set_var
    ? '$' + $var_name + '=' + $var_value
     If $var_value = ''
      Color r+/n "null - skipped" Color c+/n
      GoTo next_line
     EndIf

    $dummy = Execute ("$" + $var_name + "='" + $var_value + "'")

    :next_line
    $raw_line = Trim(SubStr(Lcase(ReadLine(1)),5))

   Loop

  Close(1)

 EndIf

Thank you, everyone, for your help.

Best regards,

Tim ==