Gapotchenko.FX.Diagnostics.CommandLine 2024.1.3

Overview

The module provides primitives for command line manipulation.

CommandLineBuilder

CommandLineBuilder class allows you to dynamically build a command line. It provides the built-in support for characters than need escaping.

Semantically CommandLineBuilder is similar to StringBuilder class:

using Gapotchenko.FX.Diagnostics;

var clb = new CommandLineBuilder();
clb.AppendParameter("/b");
clb.AppendFileName(@"C:\Temp\Test 1.txt");
clb.AppendFileName(@"C:\Temp\Test 2.txt");

Console.WriteLine(clb.ToString());

The code above produces the following output:

/b "C:\Temp\Test 1.txt" "C:\Temp\Test 2.txt"

Note how some command-line parameters were automatically quoted because they contained whitespace characters.

CommandLineBuilder supports a fluent interface, just like conventional StringBuilder. So the code can be rewritten as:

var clb = new CommandLineBuilder()
    .AppendParameter("/b")
    .AppendFileName(@"C:\Temp\Test 1.txt")
    .AppendFileName(@"C:\Temp\Test 2.txt");

Console.WriteLine(clb.ToString());

The resulting command line can be used in various places, most notably for starting a new process:

using System.Diagnostics;

Process.Start("copy", clb.ToString());

CommandLine

CommandLine static class provides operations for command line manipulation.

Build

CommandLine.Build method allows you to quickly build a command-line string from a specified list of arguments. Basically, this is a shortcut to CommandLineBuilder class in a handy functional form:

string commandLine = CommandLine.Build("/b", @"C:\Temp\Test 1.txt", @"C:\Temp\Test 2.txt");

Such a form is very useful in something like this:

Process.Start(
    "cmd",
    CommandLine.Build(
        "/C", "copy",
        "/b", @"C:\Temp\Test 1.txt", @"C:\Temp\Test 2.txt"));

Another cool thing: if you want to exclude some arguments from the command line then you can just make them null:

// 'mode' will have a non-null value if there is a need to specify it.
string? mode = binary ? "/b" : null;

string commandLine = CommandLine.Build(mode, @"C:\Temp\Test 1.txt", @"C:\Temp\Test 2.txt");
Console.WriteLine(commandLine);

The code above produces the following outputs depending on the value of binary flag:

"C:\Temp\Test 1.txt" "C:\Temp\Test 2.txt"
/b "C:\Temp\Test 1.txt" "C:\Temp\Test 2.txt"

This is a neat departure from a traditional .NET convention where it always throws ArgumentNullException. Instead, Gapotchenko.FX uses a slightly different philosophy. It does the best job possible under existing conditions by following common-sense expectations.

Split

CommandLine.Split provides the inverse operation to CommandLine.Build. It allows you to split a command-line string into a list of arguments using the rules of the host operating system:

using Gapotchenko.FX.Diagnostics;

string commandLine = "/b \"C:\\Temp\\Test 1.txt\" \"C:\\Temp\\Test 2.txt\"";

foreach (string arg in CommandLine.Split(commandLine))
    Console.WriteLine(arg);

The code above produces the following output:

/b
C:\Temp\Test 1.txt
C:\Temp\Test 2.txt

Commonly Used Types

• Gapotchenko.FX.Diagnostics.CommandLine
• Gapotchenko.FX.Diagnostics.CommandLineBuilder

Other Modules

Let's continue with a look at some other modules provided by Gapotchenko.FX:

• Gapotchenko.FX
• Gapotchenko.FX.AppModel.Information
• Gapotchenko.FX.Collections
• Gapotchenko.FX.Console
• Gapotchenko.FX.Data
• Gapotchenko.FX.Diagnostics
  • ➴ Gapotchenko.FX.Diagnostics.CommandLine
  • Gapotchenko.FX.Diagnostics.Process
  • Gapotchenko.FX.Diagnostics.WebBrowser
• Gapotchenko.FX.IO
• Gapotchenko.FX.Linq
• Gapotchenko.FX.Math
• Gapotchenko.FX.Memory
• Gapotchenko.FX.Security.Cryptography
• Gapotchenko.FX.Text
• Gapotchenko.FX.Threading
• Gapotchenko.FX.Tuples

Or look at the full list of modules.