Accessing the commandline using C#

Question

I need to access the commandline from within a C# application. I can't find a way to detect mismatched double quotes if I use the "args" parameter.

The application I'm working on the moment has an option to encrypt a string that you pass to it via the commandline.

eg.

program.exe -encrypt somestring

Results in:

EZs/6rWxvJ82+VE8unJ0Xw==

Now if the user types in this:

program.exe -encrypt somestring extra characters

it ignores everything after "somestring" (you can still access the rest of the values through the "args" parameter).

You can workaround this easily using double quotes:

program.exe -encrypt "somestring extra characters"

And of course if you want to use embedded quotes you can escape them with "\":

program.exe -encrypt "somestring \"extra\" characters"

The problem occurs when the user inputs something like this:

program.exe -encrypt "somestring extra characters

or:

program.exe -encrypt somestring ex"tra characters

The program will completely ignore the double quote, which not be what the user was expecting. I would like to detect cases like these and inform the user about the mismatched/unescaped quote, otherwise they might end up with an encrypted version of the wrong string.

Eiver · Accepted Answer · 2012-06-20 11:15:04Z

6

This is how the command line passes arguments to your C# program. You cannot change that. You can however access the command arguments string as a whole and perform the validation yourself.

MSDN: Environment.CommandLine Property

answered Jun 20, 2012 at 11:15

Eiver

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user447356 · Accepted Answer · 2012-06-20 11:10:07Z

0

Just do it manually: check that either you have only one argument after the -encrypt argument, and if not that the next argument starts with double quotes and the last argument ends with double quotes. If none of these happens throw a custom error to the user.

When the next argument after -encrypt starts with double quotes and the last argument ends with double quotes build the string yourself using Array.Copy or something of that kind.

answered Jun 20, 2012 at 11:10

user447356

2 Comments

ilitirit Over a year ago

The problem is that the quote gets completely ignored. ie. It doesn't show up as part of the value in the "args" parameter.

user447356 Over a year ago

I see, sorry for not verifying this myself. You can just take all the arguments after -encrypt and join them to be the string, telling the user -encrypt must come last if you have more arguments to support.

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