Command Line Arguments
It is possible to pass some values from the command line to your C programs when they are executed. These values are called command line arguments and many times they are important for your program especially when you want to control your program from outside instead of hard coding those values inside the code. The command line arguments are handled using main() function arguments where argc refers to the number of arguments passed, and argv[] is a pointer array which points to each argument passed to the program.
Example -
#include <stdio.h>
int main( int argc, char *argv[] )
{
printf("The first argument supplied is %s\n", argv[0]);
printf("The second argument supplied is %s\n",
argv[1]);
return 0;
}
- It should be noted that argv[0] holds the name of the program itself and argv[1] is a pointer to the first command line argument supplied, and *argv[n] is the last argument.
- If no arguments are supplied, argc will be one, and if you pass one argument then argc is set at 2.
#include <stdio.h>
int main( int argc, char * argv[] )
{
printf("The first argument supplied is %s\n",
argv[0]);
printf("The second argument supplied is %s\n",
argv[1]);
printf("The third argument supplied is %s\n",
argv[2]);
return 0;
}
