I noticed the same annoying issue recently, and decided to write a parser to parse the command line arguments array out myself.
Note: the issue is that the .NET CommandLine Arguments passed to the static void Main(string[] args) function escapes \" and \\. This is by design, since you may actually want to pass an argument that has a quote or backslash in it. One example:
say you wanted to pass the following as a single argument:
-msg:Hey, "Where you at?"
eg.
sampleapp -msg:"Hey, \"Where you
at?\""
Would be how to send it with the default behavior.
If you don't see a reason for anyone to have to escape quotes or backslashes for your program, you could utilize your own parser to parse the command line, as below.
IE.
[program].exe "C:\test\" arg1 arg2
would have a args[0] = c:\test" arg1 arg2
What you would expect is args[0]=c:\test\ and then args[1]=arg1 and args[2]=arg2.
The below function parses the arguments into a list with this simplified behavior.
Note, arg[0] is the program name using the below code. (You call List.ToArray() to convert the resulting list to a string array.)
protected enum enumParseState : int { StartToken, InQuote, InToken };
public static List<String> ManuallyParseCommandLine()
{
String CommandLineArgs = Environment.CommandLine.ToString();
Console.WriteLine("Command entered: " + CommandLineArgs);
List<String> listArgs = new List<String>();
Regex rWhiteSpace = new Regex("[\\s]");
StringBuilder token = new StringBuilder();
enumParseState eps = enumParseState.StartToken;
for (int i = 0; i < CommandLineArgs.Length; i++)
{
char c = CommandLineArgs[i];
// Console.WriteLine(c.ToString() + ", " + eps);
//Looking for beginning of next token
if (eps == enumParseState.StartToken)
{
if (rWhiteSpace.IsMatch(c.ToString()))
{
//Skip whitespace
}
else
{
token.Append(c);
eps = enumParseState.InToken;
}
}
else if (eps == enumParseState.InToken)
{
if (rWhiteSpace.IsMatch(c.ToString()))
{
Console.WriteLine("Token: [" + token.ToString() + "]");
listArgs.Add(token.ToString().Trim());
eps = enumParseState.StartToken;
//Start new token.
token.Remove(0, token.Length);
}
else if (c == '"')
{
// token.Append(c);
eps = enumParseState.InQuote;
}
else
{
token.Append(c);
eps = enumParseState.InToken;
}
}
//When in a quote, white space is included in the token
else if (eps == enumParseState.InQuote)
{
if (c == '"')
{
// token.Append(c);
eps = enumParseState.InToken;
}
else
{
token.Append(c);
eps = enumParseState.InQuote;
}
}
}
if (token.ToString() != "")
{
listArgs.Add(token.ToString());
Console.WriteLine("Final Token: " + token.ToString());
}
return listArgs;
}
