Next: Environment Variables, Up: Program Basics

### 25.1 Program Arguments

The system starts a C program by calling the function `main`. It is up to you to write a function named `main`—otherwise, you won't even be able to link your program without errors.

In ISO C you can define `main` either to take no arguments, or to take two arguments that represent the command line arguments to the program, like this:

         int main (int argc, char *argv[])

The command line arguments are the whitespace-separated tokens given in the shell command used to invoke the program; thus, in ‘`cat foo bar`’, the arguments are ‘`foo`’ and ‘`bar`’. The only way a program can look at its command line arguments is via the arguments of `main`. If `main` doesn't take arguments, then you cannot get at the command line.

The value of the argc argument is the number of command line arguments. The argv argument is a vector of C strings; its elements are the individual command line argument strings. The file name of the program being run is also included in the vector as the first element; the value of argc counts this element. A null pointer always follows the last element: argv`[`argc`]` is this null pointer.

For the command ‘`cat foo bar`’, argc is 3 and argv has three elements, `"cat"`, `"foo"` and `"bar"`.

In Unix systems you can define `main` a third way, using three arguments:

         int main (int argc, char *argv[], char *envp[])

The first two arguments are just the same. The third argument envp gives the program's environment; it is the same as the value of `environ`. See Environment Variables. POSIX.1 does not allow this three-argument form, so to be portable it is best to write `main` to take two arguments, and use the value of `environ`.