On Windows, the following C program: 

#include <stdio.h>
int main(int argc, char* argv[])
{
   int i;
   for (i = 0; i < argc; ++i) { printf("%d:%s:\n", i, argv[i]); }
   return 0;
}

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when run like this: 
> arg.exe "abc "" xyz"

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prints: 
0:arg.exe:
1:abc " xyz:

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Though escaping double quotes inside a double quoted string by repeating them (as above) is ungainly, it is common in the Windows world and I need to support it.

Notice that the following Perl program: 

for my $arg (@ARGV) { print "$arg:\n" }

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when run with the same command line arguments: 
> perl arg.pl "abc "" xyz"

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prints instead: 
abc ":
xyz:

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I tried: 

use strict;
use warnings;
use Win32::API;
my $getcmdline = Win32::API->new( 'kernel32.dll', 'GetCommandLine', []
+, 'P' )
   or die "error: Win32::API GetCommandLine: $^E";
my $cmdline = pack 'Z*', $getcmdline->Call();
$cmdline =~ tr/\0//d;     # remove any NULLs left over from pack Z*
$cmdline =~ s/\s+$//;     # remove trailing white space
print "cmdline=$cmdline:\n";

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to get at the Windows command line, but ran into the "random crashing problem" described at Win32::API Memory Exception with GetCommandLine() (which returns a static string).

It seems I'll need to use Win32::CommandLine (which I cannot currently get to build cleanly) or write a C front end to do the argument passing before launching Perl. Is there another way around this that I've missed?

In reply to Parsing Windows CommandLine from Perl by eyepopslikeamosquito

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