Delphi Basics : FindCmdLineSwitch command07

Since I keep forgetting about this, and there is the Embarcadero documentation for it has had no examples added in Delphi 2007 or later: [WayBack] Delphi Basics : FindCmdLineSwitch command

Example code : Saerch the program parameters for 3 switches

begin // Before running this code, use the Run/parameters menu option // to set the following command line parameters : /def abc /ghi ShowMessage(CmdLine);     // Show the execution command + parameters // How many parameters were passed? ShowMessage(‘There are ‘+IntToStr(ParamCount)+’ parameters’); // Scan for parm1, parm2 and parm3 parameters if FindCmdLineSwitch(‘abc’) then ShowMessage(‘abc found’) else ShowMessage(‘abc NOT found’); if FindCmdLineSwitch(‘def’) then ShowMessage(‘def found’) else ShowMessage(‘def NOT found’); if FindCmdLineSwitch(‘ghi’) then ShowMessage(‘ghi found’) else ShowMessage(‘ghi NOT found’); end;

Show full unit code

“C:\Program files\Borland\Delphi7\Projects\Project1.exe” /def abc /ghi There are 3 parameters abc NOT found def found ghi found

Related: [WayBack] delphi – How to read value of ParamStr with different deliminators? – Stack Overflow

Unchanged Embarcadero Delphi 2007 documentation:

• [WayBack] SysUtils.FindCmdLineSwitch Function
• [WayBack] System.ParamStr Function
• [WayBack] System.ParamCount Function

For comparison, the Delphi 10.2 Rio documentation:

• [WayBack] System.SysUtils.FindCmdLineSwitch – RAD Studio API Documentation
  

  FindCmdLineSwitch determines whether a string represents a command-line switch, based on the first character of the string.

  • Switch is a command-line parameter to search for.
  • Chars is the set of characters that distinguish switches from other parameters. If Switch is omitted, it defaults to ‘-‘ on Unix based systems, and to ‘/’ and ‘-‘ on Windows based systems.
  • IgnoreCase determines whether case-insensitive character matching is used. The default is True. This function can also be used to retrieve parameter values in addition to finding command-line switches, for that overload.
  • Value returns the value associated with the specified switch.
  • SwitchTypes determines how parameter values are parsed:

  Constant	Value
  clstValueNextParam	-p Value
  clstValueAppended	-p Value or -p:Value

  The clstValueNextParam parameter specifies that values are separated from the switch by a space character. The clstValueAppended parameter specifies that the values are appended immediately, following the switch (no space) or after a colon. SwitchTypes is a set type parameter and the default is to allow values of both parameter types to be returned–[clstValueNextParam, clstValueAppended]. Any single switch type may be specified as well. An empty SwitchType parameter, [], will result in no values being returned. Pass the SwitchTypes parameter to exclude any of these switch types (Switch may be 1 or more characters in length.)

• [WayBack] System.ParamCount – RAD Studio API Documentation
• [WayBack] System.ParamStr – RAD Studio API Documentation
• [WayBack] System.SysUtils.TCmdLineSwitchType – RAD Studio API Documentation
• [WayBack] System.SysUtils.TCmdLineSwitchTypes – RAD Studio API Documentation
• [WayBack] System.SysUtils.TSysCharSet – RAD Studio API Documentation

The really odd thing? The really versatile TCommandParser class got ditched after Delphi XE6: On the Delphi TCommandParser class for parsing command-lines and arguments (via: Suggestions for how to define command line parameters – Stack Overflow).

–jeroen