Is there a better way to pass command line arguments to my programs in VC++?

Question

I'm writing a program in C++ and it takes some command line arguments. The only way I know to pass command line arguments in VSC++ is to open up the properties and navigate to the command line argument field and enter them in, then run it. That's not exactly streamlined if I want to pass in different arguments each time I run it.

The other option is to just open up a command prompt in the directory where the executable is placed and to run it from the command line there, but then if I want to use the debugger I have to attach it and that's a pain too.

Is there a better way to do this?

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 10 '09 at 08:00

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If its just for quick testing or whatever, you could just create local variables in your main method instead of passing arguments in. Makes it a lot quicker/easier to change them.

answered Jul 10 '09 at 08:00

James

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And for the sake of not accidentially leaving this code in a release build you can use smth like #ifdef _DEBUG to only have this code in non-release version of code. – sharptooth Jul 10 '09 at 08:04

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 10 '09 at 08:00

I don't think there's anything built-in that can do that, but you could write a macro that asks for input, sets the command line arguments and starts the debugger. I don't have code to sets the command line arguments, but I could probably dig up some code that starts the debugger.

Regards,

Sebastiaan

score 3 · Answer 3 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:30

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The StackOverflow link below shows how to do this, answered by grrussel:

devenv /debugexe 'program name' 'program arguments'

This way you can start the debugger from a command line.

Debugging with command-line parameters in Visual Studio

edited May 23 '17 at 12:30

Community

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answered Jul 10 '09 at 08:03

Amadeus45

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Is there a better way to pass command line arguments to my programs in VC++?

3 Answers3