command-line-lexing
Splitting command lines into arguments (and back) on Windows
(This is not command line parsing - that's interpreting filenames and options and stuff on the command line, and there are plenty of packages for that. This is lexing - splitting the command line into the executable file name and arguments.)
On Windows, programs are responsible for their own command line lexing. C and C++ programs usually do it by letting the C/C++ runtime do it - command lines are already lexed by the time main(int argc, char *argv[])
is called. C# (and VB) programs
get their arguments lexed by the .NET runtime before Main(string[] args)
(or Main(ByVal cmdArgs() As String)
) is called. Otherwise, programs generally do it by calling the Windows API function CommandLineToArgvW
.
But sometimes you have to get dirty and break down the command line yourself - or build it up. If you're working in a .NET managed language this is the library for it.
News
2014-04-10: Setting up the repository today. First version of code - working through unit tests and sample command line application.
2014-04-11: And now quotifying arguments and building a command line is in and tested.
2014-04-14: Used ILMerge to move Utilities assembly into CommandLineLexer assembly and make all Utilities types internal so that Utilities assembly isn't separately deployed. Reason is: It's only a subset of my larger (not yet on github) utilities library and having it deployed might interfere with other copies of it.
2014-04-14: Having some issues with Nuget packaging and symbolsource.org. First, having run ILMerge to eliminate the Utilities assembly I get a binary package that has only the CommandLineLexer.dll as desired, but the sources package has no sources for Utilities. I ended up running two different "nuget packs" - one without including dependent projects, and one with, and uploaded a mixed set so that Nuget got one without Utilities but symbolsource.org got one with all the source (and the Utilities assembly too). But then, testing on a second machine, I couldn't step into even the CommandLineLexer code (I didn't even get to Utilities code). So I uploaded a matched set that included the Utilities.dll to Nuget and I couldn't step into that either. Finally, I just added a dependency to a random package I found on symbolsource.org (FluentPath) and couldn't step into that. In all cases symbolsource.org was returning 404 for all pdbs (according to Fiddler). So I put a message on Google Groups for Symbolsource asking what I was doing wrong.