RE: [Boost-Users] Re: command line parsing

From: Ben Hutchings (ben.hutchings_at_[hidden])
Date: 2003-04-17 12:15:33

E. Scott Larsen wrote:
> Just FYI to this thread in general.  It's been a while since I've
messed 
> with WinMain and command lines, but if my memory serves me right (it
was 
> at a different place, so I don't have the code here), there's some 
> additional whacky issues here.  WinMain recieves the first arguments 
> differently depending on how it is run:
> *) from MSVC debugger
> *) from a commandline
> *) by clicking on an shortcut icon
> *) by clicking in an explorer window

I find this hard to believe, as WinMain is just given a pointer into the
command line returned by GetCommandLine(), incremented past the program
name and any following space.

> don't remember which is which, but one gives just the executable name,

> one gives the full path to the executable (seems like there's two 
> variations on this, like one is quoted and one is not, don't remember 
> the details), and it seems like there's one that doesn't give the 
> executable at all.

I can imagine there's some variation in program name; it's normal for
programs to be started with short names rather than their full
filenames.  The quoting is weird though; that should be removed before
you see it.

> Also, I _distinctly_ remember something very whacky when I used
unicode, 
> I don't remember the details, but the commandline arguments were a 
> significant pain for a program built with unicode support using the 
> unicode windows entry function.  That still tastes bad in my mouth.

According to the docs, this ought to work:

    wchar_t ** argv;
    int argc;
    argv = CommandLineToArgvW(GetCommandLineW(), &argc);

but I've never tried it; maybe it doesn't.

If you were using WinCE then I feel your pain and hope you've recovered.