Passing Arguments to a Console App using C#

In this post, we will create a console app that accepts arguments or switches.

In Visual Studio, create a new console app:

The args parameter gives us what the user has entered, e.g:

sampleapp.exe -something /i dosomething

Add some code to print the arguments the user has provided. We will print the first 2 arguments:

Now, run the app and provide 2 arguments. We can see when we provide SampleArg1 and SampleArg2 as the first 2 arguments, these are printed out:

Knowing this, we can add switch or if statements to determine what to do when we encounter certain parameters, with prefixes such as “-“, “/” etc. For example, we can add code to look for a switch, such as “/l”:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Threading.Tasks;

namespace Carl.ConsoleAppArgs
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            foreach (string arg in args)
            {
                if (arg.StartsWith("/"))
                {
                    switch (arg.Substring(1))
                    {
                        case "j":
                            Console.WriteLine("You entered /j");
                            break;
                        case "l":
                            Console.WriteLine("You entered /l");
                            break;
                        default:
                            break;
                    }
                }
            }
            Console.ReadLine();
        }
    }
}

Running this, if we enter an unknown switch, nothing will happen. With a known switch such as /j, we get a response:

ABOUT CARL DE SOUZA

Carl de Souza is a developer and architect focusing on Microsoft Dynamics 365, Power BI, Azure, and AI.

carldesouza.com | LinkedIn | Twitter | YouTube

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