go-windows-commandline

This Go package provides access to the raw command-line string as passed to a process on Windows, before it is split into os.Args.

Why?

In Go, os.Args gives you the parsed list of command-line arguments. This works well on Unix-like systems because the OS kernel passes arguments as an array of strings. However, on Windows, the situation is different:

• The Windows API passes command-line arguments to a process as a single UTF-16 encoded string.
• The Go runtime then parses this raw string into a slice of strings, following specific parsing rules.
• This behavior may lead to subtle discrepancies, especially in how quotation marks and whitespace are handled.

For applications that need to:

• Reconstruct the original command-line input,
• Handle custom quoting or parsing logic,
• Perform low-level debugging or shell-related tasks,

retrieving the unparsed command-line string is essential.

This package gives you that raw string.

Example

package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "github.com/nyaosorg/go-windows-commandline"
)

func main() {
    fmt.Println(commandline.Get())
}

Assuming your source is saved as main.go:

C:\> go build
C:\> example.exe "1  2" "3  4" "5  6"
example.exe "1  2" "3  4" "5  6"

Instead of splitting the arguments, this package returns the full raw command-line string as it was passed to the program.

Cross-Platform Note

On non-Windows platforms, this package emulates Windows-like behavior by reconstructing a command-line string from os.Args. This allows you to write cross-platform code or test Windows-specific logic on other OSes.

Author

hymkor (HAYAMA Kaoru)

License

MIT License