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When you need to write something simple, very often a console application seems like the best option. Particularly when you don’t want to waste time on cosmetics, but just want to get straight into the actual functionality.
Sometimes you get the result you hoped for. Other times, you don’t. Other times, you realise the parameters are a bit more complicated than you had anticipated. You need to display help text so that you will remember what the parameters need to be. Then you need some options. The command line validation code grows, but you didn’t plan it. It’s hard to test, and sometimes parameter errors are signalled by Windows, instead of a helpful message. Then of course, other people start to use it.
The output is hard to read, can’t it present the data so that it actually lines up? Is that too much to ask? Why did it let me delete everything? A proper app would have asked if I was sure?
Don’t they realise, you knocked this up in literally hours? What do they want? Blood?
Well, Console Toolkit is here to help. It takes care of the command line. It will format the help text. It gives you control of the output stream. It can take input from the user. All of this is packaged in a convenient and easy to implement framework with very little mental overhead for you. Get into the code you actually wanted to build faster, by letting the toolkit take the strain of actually being a good command line citizen. All this, for the low, low price of free. (Just don’t ask for a discount.)
I think it’s time for the Getting Started guide. If you’ve seen it already, there’s always the main documentation.