## ALP Programming Guide and Reference

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### Command Line Parameter Types

Command line parameters are individual "words," or patterns of characters separated by white space. Each individual parameter is recognized by the command line lexical analyzer as having a certain "pattern," and is thus assigned a parameter type, as described in the following sections. Parameters should be separated by one or more blanks, tabs, or (when reading from a response file) new line characters, and double quotation marks may be used on the command line to remove the special meaning from the operating system metacharacters. Although the host operating system may support the enclosing of command line parameters within double quotes ( "") (known as "quoting"), the ALP command line parser also performs quote interpretation. This is necessary to properly interpret quoted parameters within @Filename response files, for which there is no built-in support provided by the default operating system command shell.

Parameter types are determined by looking at the first character of each individual "word." Options begin with a plus (+) or minus (-), and file names begin with any other legal file name character (as dictated by the operating system). A special case is a word beginning with the at sign (@) character, which signifies the beginning of the @Filename (read from a response file) directive.