In an automatic programming apparatus involving NC program data for wire-cut electric discharge machining according to the invention, data specifying an approach path and a departure path, as well as wire-cut machining conditions, are registered in advance. In automatic programming, rather than entering an approach path, departure path and machining conditions separately, only machining profiles (51, 52, . . . ) are successively defined, after which the machining profile data and the registered data are used to originate, for each and every machining profile (51, 52, . . . ), (i) approach NC data, (ii) NC data for moving a wire electrode along the machining profiles (51, 52, . . . ), and (iii) departure NC data.