WinArgv 1.1.0

nuget.org: petrsnd/WinArgv

WinArgv

Windows command line generation from a standard args array (POSIX argv style)

Background

The .NET Framework's Process.Start() method receives all arguments in a single string to launch an executable. This is the case no matter which overload you call:

Process.Start(String, String)

or, even if you use a ProcessStartInfo:

Process.Start(ProcessStartInfo)

This places the burden on the caller for escaping and quoting to ensure that args array is properly formed for the Main() method of the executable launched by Process.Start().

This seems easy until there are lots of quotes, spaces, and non-standard characters in your arguments. The purpose of this project is to allow the caller to build the array of arguments just as they expect them to be received by the called executable. This library will build the properly escaped and quoted argument string to pass to Process.Start(). It will also generate a ProcessStartInfo with the FileName and Arguments fields filled out, and you can customize the rest from there.

Even though this is a simple library, this isn't a problem that should have to be solved by every developer who would like to create a process.

Example Usage

This library provides a way to build up process arguments in an array, similar to what would be used for execv(). However, the executable should be placed at index 0, so really it is more like what you would see in the argv array in main() on a POSIX system.

var argv = new List<string> {@"C:\bin\grandmaster-flash.exe", "don't push me cuz I'm close to the edge", "I'm trying not to lose my head!"};
// create a ProcessStartInfo
var startInfo = ArgvParser.GetProcessStartInfo(argv);
// or, a commandLine
var cmdLine = ArgvParser.GetCommandLine(argv);
Console.WriteLine(cmdLine.Executable);
Console.WriteLine(cmdLine.Arguments);

The argument string may look very strange, but that is because Windows argument string parsing IS strange. It will always parse out as exactly the list of arguments you wanted to send.

You can clone this code and run the OldFrameworkTest project for an interactive demo.