C and derivatives have argc
and argv
(and envp
) parameters to their entry point functions, but Swift doesn't have one proper: top-level code is just code and it doesn't have parameters.
How can one access the equivalent of argc
and argv
in a Swift program?
Process was just renamed into CommandLine (since Swift 3.0 August 4 snapshot)
let arguments = CommandLine.arguments
(for some reason this wasn't mentioned on the changelog)
Process.arguments
is your friend!
Fortunately this is much easier, and built in: no importing anything, no getting your hands dirty with C, objective or otherwise.
Consider this, let's call it args.swift
:
Swift 2 version:
var c = 0;
for arg in Process.arguments {
println("argument \(c) is: \(arg)")
c++
}
Swift 3 version:
var c = 0;
for arg in CommandLine.arguments {
print("argument \(c) is: \(arg)")
c += 1
}
We can compile and run it like this:
$ swift -o args args.swift && ./args fee fi fo fum
argument 0 is: ./args
argument 1 is: fee
argument 2 is: fi
argument 3 is: fo
argument 4 is: fum
Note that the first argument is the program name, as you might expect.
It seems every argument is a String, as you might also expect.
I hope very much that Process
becomes more useful as Swift matures, but right now it seems to only give you the arguments. Which is a lot, if you're trying to write a pure-Swift program.
As soon as your app is up I'd use the process info:
let args = NSProcessInfo.processInfo().arguments
print(args)
Nothing unsafe there, very convenient.
Note that you have to import Foundation
(or Cocoa
/ UIKit
).
For Swift 3 you can use this code:
let argc = CommandLine.argc
let argv = UnsafeMutableRawPointer(CommandLine.unsafeArgv).bindMemory(to: UnsafeMutablePointer<Int8>.self, capacity: Int(CommandLine.argc))
which is equivalent of argc
and argv
parameters used in Objective-C main function:
int main(int argc, char *argv[])
For older versions of Swift, you can use Process.argc
and Process.unsafeArgv
or C_ARGC
and C_ARGV
.
You can pass this variables to UIApplicationMain
function in iOS app:
Swift 3:
let argc = CommandLine.argc
let argv = UnsafeMutableRawPointer(CommandLine.unsafeArgv).bindMemory(to: UnsafeMutablePointer<Int8>.self, capacity: Int(CommandLine.argc))
UIApplicationMain(argc, argv, nil, NSStringFromClass(AppDelegate.self))
previous Swift versions:
UIApplicationMain(Process.argc, Process.unsafeArgv, nil, NSStringFromClass(AppDelegate.self))
or:
UIApplicationMain(C_ARGC, C_ARGC, nil, NSStringFromClass(AppDelegate.self))
Objective-C:
int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
@autoreleasepool {
return UIApplicationMain(argc, argv, nil, NSStringFromClass([AppDelegate class]));
}
}
import Foundation
println(C_ARGC) //CInt
println(C_ARGV) // CString
As in the above code, you can use C_ARGC to get number of arguments. C_ARGV to get this arguments.