Expanding wildcard arguments
Wildcard argument expansion is Microsoft-specific.
When you run a C program, you can use either of the two wildcards, the question mark (?
) and the asterisk (*
), to specify filename and path arguments on the command line.
By default, wildcards aren't expanded in command-line arguments. You can replace the normal argument vector argv
loading routine with a version that does expand wildcards by linking with the setargv.obj
or wsetargv.obj
file. If your program uses a main
function, link with setargv.obj
. If your program uses a wmain
function, link with wsetargv.obj
. Both of these have equivalent behavior.
To link with setargv.obj
or wsetargv.obj
, use the /link
option. For example:
cl example.c /link setargv.obj
The wildcards are expanded in the same manner as operating system commands.