Splitting command lines into arguments (and back) on Windows
(This is not command line parsing - that's interpreting filenames and options and stuff on the command line, and there are plenty of packages for that. This is lexing - splitting the command line into the executable file name and arguments.)
On Windows, programs are responsible for their own command line lexing. C and C++ programs usually do it by letting the C/C++ runtime do it - command lines are already lexed by the time main(int argc, char *argv[]) is called. C# (and VB) programs
get their arguments lexed by the .NET runtime before Main(string[] args) (or Main(ByVal cmdArgs() As String)) is called. Otherwise, programs generally do it by calling the Windows API function CommandLineToArgvW.
But sometimes you have to get dirty and break down the command line yourself - or build it up. If you're working in a .NET managed language this is the library for it.
2014-04-10: Setting up the repository today. First version of code - working through unit tests and sample command line application.
2014-04-11: And now quotifying arguments and building a command line is in and tested.
2014-04-14: Used ILMerge to move Utilities assembly into CommandLineLexer assembly and make all Utilities types internal so that Utilities assembly isn't separately deployed. Reason is: It's only a subset of my larger (not yet on github) utilities library and having it deployed might interfere with other copies of it.
2014-04-14: Having some issues with Nuget packaging and symbolsource.org. First, having run ILMerge to eliminate the Utilities assembly I get a binary package that has only the CommandLineLexer.dll as desired, but the sources package has no sources for Utilities. I ended up running two different "nuget packs" - one without including dependent projects, and one with, and uploaded a mixed set so that Nuget got one without Utilities but symbolsource.org got one with all the source (and the Utilities assembly too). But then, testing on a second machine, I couldn't step into even the CommandLineLexer code (I didn't even get to Utilities code). So I uploaded a matched set that included the Utilities.dll to Nuget and I couldn't step into that either. Finally, I just added a dependency to a random package I found on symbolsource.org (FluentPath) and couldn't step into that. In all cases symbolsource.org was returning 404 for all pdbs (according to Fiddler). So I put a message on Google Groups for Symbolsource asking what I was doing wrong.