How to handle Microsoft strange command line handling of escape character - c++

Question

A third party system calls a program I am writing that takes in a path as the first argument on the command line. An example command line might be something like:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\ProgramX"
Actually this isn't printed how I want in this editor, an example input might be:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\ProgramX\"
The problem is that Windows seems to correctly identify the first and second backslash as backslash characters and not the escape character. But the third backslash is seen as an escape of " and so you end up argv[1] being:
C:\Program Files (x86)\ProgramX"
Is this a bug? What is a reliable way to handle this issue?
Sample code below.
If you run the program: test.exe "C:\Program Files (x86)\ProgramX"
it prints:
>test.exe "C:\Program Files (x86)\ProgramX\"
No. args: 2
arg[0] = test.exe
arg[1] = C:\Program Files (x86)\ProgramX"
path: C:\Program Files (x86)\ProgramX" does not exist
/*
pass in for example
test.exe "C:\Program Files (x86)\ProgramX\"
prints path does not exist
*/
#include <string>
#include <iostream>
#include <windows.h>
bool DirectoryExists(const char* path)
{
DWORD dwAttrib = GetFileAttributes(path);
return (dwAttrib != INVALID_FILE_ATTRIBUTES &&
(dwAttrib & FILE_ATTRIBUTE_DIRECTORY));
}
int main(int argc, char* argv[]) {
std::cout << "No. args: " << argc << std::endl;
for (int i = 0; i < argc; i++) {
std::cout << "arg[" << i << "] = " << argv[i] << std::endl;
}
if (argc > 1) {
std::string path(argv[1]);
std::cout << "path: " << path << (DirectoryExists(path.c_str()) ? " exists" : " does not exist") << std::endl;
}
}