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What is a command-line argument?

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Command-line arguments are simple parameters that are given on the system's command line, and the values of these arguments are passed on to your program during program execution. When a program starts execution without user interaction, command-line arguments are used to pass values or files to...
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Command-line arguments are simple parameters that are given on the system's command line, and the values of these arguments are passed on to your program during program execution.
When a program starts execution without user interaction, command-line arguments are used to pass values or files to it.
 
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You might be familiar with the following simple way to define the main function: int main() {/* blah blah */}but, the more general way to define main is as followsint main(int argc, char* argv) {/* blah blah */}Suppose you compile this file into say a.out, and then if you execute the program from the...
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You might be familiar with the following simple way to define the main function:

int main() {
/* blah blah */
}
but, the more general way to define main is as follows

int main(int argc, char* argv[]) {
/* blah blah */
}

Suppose you compile this file into say a.out, and then if you execute the program from the terminal (command prompt) as follows
> ./a.out Hello World

the words Hello, and World are called as command-line arguments, and a.out is the executable (or program).

When executed as mentiond above, the values of argc and argv that the main function recieves would be as follows:

argc gets a value of 3 (the length of the argv array)

argv[0] points to a string with contents "./a.out"

argv[1] points to a string with contents "Hello"

and argv[2] points to a string with contents "World"

Within the main function, you can program different behaviours depending on these variables.

Learn by doing:

Compile the following and execute it with different command-line arguments to see it in action:

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