COMMAND LINE ARGUMENTS

It is possible to pass arguments to C programs when they are executed. The brackets which follow main are used for this purpose. argc refers to the number of arguments passed, and argv[] is a pointer array which points to each argument which is passed to main.

A simple example follows, which checks to see if a single argument is supplied on the command line when the program is invoked.

 #include <stdio.h>

 main( int argc, char *argv[] )  

{

     if( argc == 2 )

          printf("The argument supplied is %s\n", argv[1]);

                else if( argc > 2 )

                    printf("Too many arguments supplied.\n");

                 else

                    printf("One argument expected.\n");

 }

Note that *argv[0] is the name of the program invoked, which means that *argv[1] is a pointer to the first argument supplied, and *argv[n] is the last argument. If no arguments are supplied, argc will be one. Thus for n arguments, argc will be equal to n + 1. The program is called by the command line, myprog argument1