How to make IntelliJ prompt me for command line arguments

Question

In Eclipse, you can provide the program argument ${string_prompt} in your run configuration to have it prompt for the command line arguments.

Is there a way to do this in IntelliJ?

Answer 1

Edit:

This may be a bug in IDEA, the solution that I first posted (you can see it below) causes Intellij to hang after entering parameter.

I couldn't come up with a solution to this, but here's a little trick: you can scroll to the very bottom of Run/Debug configuration screen and in "Before launch" section check a checkbox saying "Show this page".

From now on you'll be automatically shown configuration screen when you choose to Run/Debug your application and there you can enter any parameters you want... It's not that comfortable, but at least a little bit more automatized.

Previous answer:

This is a bit more complicated with Intellij:

• go to Settings -> External Tools -> Add (green plus)
• in Parameters line click Insert macro -> Prompt (you can simply type in $Prompt$ as well)
• save settings
• go to Run -> Edit Configurations...
• in Before Launch section choose Run External Tool and select tool that you've created

That should suffice (works in IDEA 12.1.6).

Answer 2

Starting from versions 2018.3 and 2019.1, IntelliJ now supports macros in Run configurations. You can use $Prompt$ anywhere in the VM Options, Program arguments, etc. fields, and it will behave just like ${string_prompt} in Eclipse -- it will prompt you for parameters when the configuration is run.

Answer 3

Based on using Intellij IDEA 2020.3, we can set the configuration to prompt for program arguments at the program arguments field