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Modern C# and .NET Tutorial: Cross-Platform Basics

Passing Arguments to a Console App

Explore how to pass command-line arguments to C# console applications and handle them within both legacy and top-level .NET 6 programs. Learn how to configure arguments in Visual Studio 2022 and Visual Studio Code, use the args array to read input values, and iterate through arguments to control app behavior dynamically.

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When we run a console app, we often want to change its behavior by passing arguments. For example, with the dotnet command-line tool, we can pass the name of a new project template, as shown in the following commands:

Shell
dotnet new console
dotnet new mvc

We might have been wondering how to get any arguments that might be passed to a console app. In every version of .NET before version 6.0, the console app project template made it obvious, as shown in the following code:

C#
using System;
namespace Arguments
{
  class Program
  {
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
      Console.WriteLine("Hello World!");
    }
  } 
}

Command-line arguments in top-level program

The string[] args arguments are declared and passed in the Main ...