Regarding 'main(int argc, char *argv[])' [duplicate]

Question

The arguments argc and argv of main is used as a way to send arguments to a program, the possibly most familiar way is to use the good ol' terminal where an user could type cat file. Here the word cat is a program that takes a file and outputs it to standard output (stdout).

The program receives the number of arguments in argc and the vector of arguments in argv, in the above the argument count would be two (The program name counts as the first argument) and the argument vector would contain [cat,file,null]. While the last element being a null-pointer.

Commonly, you would write it like this:

int  // Specifies that type of variable the function returns.
     // main() must return an integer
main ( int argc, char **argv ) {
     // code
     return 0; // Indicates that everything went well.
}

If your program does not require any arguments, it is equally valid to write a main-function in the following fashion:

int main() {
  // code
  return 0; // Zero indicates success, while any 
  // Non-Zero value indicates a failure/error
}

In the early versions of the C language, there was no int before main as this was implied. Today, this is considered to be an error.

On POSIX-compliant systems (and Windows), there exists the possibility to use a third parameter char **envp which contains a vector of the programs environment variables. Further variations of the argument list of the main function exists, but I will not detail it here since it is non-standard.

Also, the naming of the variables is a convention and has no actual meaning. It is always a good idea to adhere to this so that you do not confuse others, but it would be equally valid to define main as

int main(int c, char **v, char **e) {
   // code
   return 0;
}

And for your second question, there are several ways to send arguments to a program. I would recommend you to look at the exec*()family of functions which is POSIX-standard, but it is probably easier to just use system("command arg1 arg2"), but the use of system() is usually frowned upon as it is not guaranteed to work on every system. I have not tested it myself; but if there is no bash,zsh, or other shell installed on a *NIX-system, system() will fail.

Those are for passing arguments to your program, for example from command line, when a program is invoked

$ gcc mysort.c -o mysort

$ mysort 2 8 9 1 4 5

Above, the program mysort is executed with some command line parameters. Inside main( int argc, char * argv[]), this would result in

Argument Count, argc = 7 

since there are 7 arguments (counting the program), and

Argument Vector, argv[] = { "mysort", "2", "8", "9", "1", "4", "5" };

Following is a complete example.

$ cat mysort.c
#include <stdio.h>
int main( int argc, char * argv [] ) {
    printf( "argc = %d\n", argc );
    for( int i = 0; i < argc; ++i ) {
        printf( "argv[ %d ] = %s\n", i, argv[ i ] );
    }
}

$ gcc mysort.c -o mysort

$ ./mysort 2 8 9 1 4 5
argc = 7
argv[ 0 ] = ./mysort
argv[ 1 ] = 2
argv[ 2 ] = 8
argv[ 3 ] = 9
argv[ 4 ] = 1
argv[ 5 ] = 4
argv[ 6 ] = 5

[The char strings "2", "8" etc. can be converted to number using some character to number conversion function, e.g. atol() (link)]

With argc (argument count) and argv (argument vector) you can get the number and the values of passed arguments when your application has been launched.

This way you can use parameters (such as -version) when your application is started to act a different way.

But you can also use int main(void) as a prototype in C.

There is a third (less known and nonstandard) prototype with a third argument which is envp. It contains environment variables.

---

Resources:

• Wikipedia - Main function, C and C++

argc means the number of argument that are passed to the program. char* argv[] are the passed arguments. argv[0] is always the program name itself. I'm not a 100% sure, but I think int main() is valid in C/C++.

argc is the number of command line arguments given to the program at runtime, and argv is an array of arrays of characters (rather, an array of C-strings) containing these arguments. If you know you're not going to need the command line arguments, you can declare your main at taking a void argument, instead:

int main(void) {
    /* ... */ 
}

Those are the only two prototypes defined for main as per the standards, but some compilers allow a return type of void as well. More on this on Wikipedia.

The comp.lang.c FAQ deals with the question

"What's the correct declaration of main()?"

in Question 11.12a.