command line arguments strange behaviour

[Oleg Medyanik]

Hi, i wonder if someone can explain the following...
Create new Console application...
static void Main(string[] args)
{
Console.WriteLi ne(args[0]);
}

Run it with the following param

ConsoleApplicat ion1.exe test$^
On my Win XP and NET 1.1 i receive the output: test$
^ disappears.

Faced it first when worked with custom installer, then tried the simple
program also parsing command line...
Is ^ char used in splits?
ConsoleApplicat ion1.exe test^^^^
produces the following output : test^^

Thank you.

[Mattias Sjögren]

Re: command line arguments strange behaviour

Oleg,
[color=blue]
>Is ^ char used in splits?[/color]

No it's an escape character (sort of like \ in C# string literals).
You can use it to escape otherwise special characters such as < and >.

ConsoleApplicat ion1.exe test$^>

should print

test$>



Mattias

--
Mattias Sjögren [MVP] mattias @ mvps.org
http://www.msjogren.net/dotnet/ | http://www.dotnetinterop.com
Please reply only to the newsgroup.

[Oleg Medyanik]

Re: command line arguments strange behaviour

Mattias - thank you for the explanation....

All below are just thoughts.....

As i already wrote, i faced this problem writing setup for the project....
But in real, the situation was like that -

Imagine, you add user dialog (TextBoxes A) to your setup project.
Fields are used for DB Setup in your custom installer.....

On installing user reports that DB login constantly fails.....
I become very nervous because it was tested many times......

As appears, InstallContext. ParseCommandLin e (where custom installer take the
dialog field values from) also skips the literals )))
So if user provides password "test^ " he is not able to login than .....

As a sloution i wrote my own custom dialog called from the installer, but it
this i think the situation is quite silly )))
1. I can not use regular features provided by Setup Projects.
2. I can not explain the customer that he can not use ^ character in his
passwords..... )))

_______________ _______________ _______________ _______________ ______

Sincerely yours,
Oleg Medyanik