Thread: parsing command line strings

What's the best way to parse command line arguments for a shell program? Also, what's the most amount of arguments a command can have, such as "ls" or "rm" (the max arguments/options any command can have)? I'm using execvp( cmd, args ) to run the command, where cmd is the command and args is the parsed string of arguments and options will a NULL value at the end. Assume the path variable is set in the environment and all variables have been innitialized.

Code:

         //Assume the cmd variable contains the full string "ls -l"

          token = strtok( cmd, " " ); //holds tokens in the string
	   cmd = token; //the first token is the command

	   //store the rest of the tokens in the arguments array
	   while ( token != NULL )
	   {
	   		token = strtok( NULL, " " );
	   		args[ count ] = token;
	   		count++;
	   }

	   code = execvp( cmd, args );

> Also, what's the most amount of arguments a command can have
That's system dependant, but in Linux it can be found in /usr/include/linux/limits.h

On my system it's defined as, #define ARG_MAX 131072 /* # bytes of args + environ for exec() */

Are you going to support full parsing? Ie, ls --format=commas OR ls --format='commas' OR ls --format="commas" are all valid.

This is how i do it:

Code:

int main(int argc, char* argv[])
{
    char fName[1024] = "";
    int width = 0;
    int height = 0;
    
    //Loop through command arguments
    for(int i = 0; i < argc; ++i)
    {
        //Check if it starts with a "-"
        if(argv[i][0] == '-')
        {
            switch(argv[i][1])
            {
                //If we're setting the width variable
                case 'w':
                case 'W':
                    if(++i < argc)
                      width = atoi(argv[i]);
                break;

                //If we're setting the height variable
                case 'h':
                case 'H':
                    if(++i < argc)
                      height = atoi(argv[i]);
                break;
            }
            
        //If it is not a command option (an option starting with '-'),
        //its probably the name of the file that was dragged onto the exe
        } else if(i == 1)
            strncpy(fName, argv[i], sizeof(fName));
    }
    printf("File: &#37;s\n", fName);
    printf("Width: %i\n", width);
    printf("Height: %i\n", height);

    if(strlen(fName))
    {
        //Do something
    }
    return 1;
}

So it could pass this: myProg.exe fileToOpen.txt -W 32 -H 64

This would print

File: fileToOpen.txt
Width: 32
Height: 32

EDIT: Now that i look again, this may not be what you want

What exactly is it that doesn't work, and how is it "not working"?

I don't see anything obvious that is wrong in your code.

Edit: Ah, except you are missing the first argument (argv[0]), which should be the name of the command (e.g. "ls").

Just add:

Code:

	   		args[ count ] = token;
	   		count++;

before your while ( token != NULL ) line.


--
Mats

I already take care of the first command, from my original code.

Code:

         token = strtok( cmd, " " ); //holds tokens in the string
	   cmd = token; //the first token is the command

so say I enter the string "ls -l", cmd = ls, and -l is stored in the args array, which is ended by a NULL value at the last position in the array.

Is it that simple tho, passing an array of arguments, than i'm done? Cause it's not working up till now.

Code:

         //or maybe it should be like this?  using a different string to contain the standard input?
          token = strtok( input, " " ); //holds tokens in the string
	   cmd = token; //the first token is the command

First of all, I asked in the previous post what is not working. In what way is it not working? If you explain what is going wrong, we may be better placed to answer what to do about it.

And what I was trying to say is that your string comes in "ls -l", and you should produce the following:

Code:

cmd = "ls";
argv[] = { "ls", "-l", NULL };

So cmd is copied in two places.

--
Mats

You can have:

Code:

char *argv[100000] = { "ls" , "-l", NULL };

As long as it's big enough for the actual number of arguments you are using, it doesn't matter. It is passed as the address of the "vector" to execvp(), and execvp() will read the vector to find how many arguments there really are.

So do I get it right that you get "ls" to work, but if you do "ls -l" it does exactly the same as "ls"? In that case, my supposition is that argv[1] is not "-l", but NULL, and argv[0] contains the "-l" - since ls itself skips argv[0], it sees no arguments and just does normal "ls" instead of the long version you expect from "-l".

--
Mats

Ok, after trying a couple things out I know what's wrong. If I make the array holding the arguments some generic size, say 20 (to account for any number of possible arguments) I run into problems, Even though I do null terminate it. But when I make the array a set size, say 3, and than test out writing "ls -l" it works. But the problem is now it no longer works for just "ls" or a command longer with more options. Is it supposed to matter if I pass the exec() command an array with empty values as long as it's null terminated (which doesn't seem to work)?

Hmmm. Worked fine for me.

Code:

me@initech:~/yup> gcc -g -o yup yup.c
me@initech:~/yup> ./yup
ls -l
total 16
-rwxr-xr-x 1 me users 9731 2008-05-27 16:57 yup
-rw-r--r-- 1 me users 1737 2008-05-27 16:56 yup.c


me@initech:~/yup>

EDIT:
If you compile this with optimizations, though, your method for NULL-terminating the args array may fail spectacularly, because unused entries between the last actual entry and the one you've set to NULL, which is the last in the array, will likely be filled with garbage. I would suggest initializing the args array with zeros to prevent this from happening. Here's what happens:

Code:

me@initech:~/yup> gcc -Wall -O3 -o yup yup.c
me@initech:~/yup> ./yup
ls -l
ls: ▒▒▒▒▒: No such file or directory
ls: ▒▒: No such file or directory
ls: \▒: No such file or directory
ls: ▒▒: No such file or directory
ls: (▒|(▒: No such file or directory
ls: ▒▒ ▒▒▒▒▒ ▒▒▒)▒▒▒▒E▒t%1▒▒֋E▒▒▒D▒E
▒D$▒▒$▒▒▒9}▒u߃▒[^_]Ë$▒U▒▒S▒▒▒▒▒▒▒t1▒▒Ћ▒▒▒▒▒▒▒u▒▒[]Ð▒▒U▒▒S▒▒▒: No such file or directory
ls: : No such file or directory

me@initech:~/yup>

Originally Posted by John_L

What was wrong, was for some reason the fact I was using an array of arbitrary size to store the commands in and it some values were left unfilled but it was still null terminated. So instead I created a new array of set size (after counting the number of arguments), copied parts of the old array into the new, null terminated it and passed it to the exec() command. Works great now. I just thought I could use an array of any size as long as it was null terminated.

You can use any size array. Perhaps you can post your code and we can discuss how you should solve the problem.

Also, it may make sense to write an application that shows it's own arguments, e.g.

Code:

#include <stdio.h>

int main(int argc, char **argv)
{
    int i;
    printf("argc = %d, argv = %p\n", argc, (void *)argv);
    for(i = 0; i <= argc; i++)
       printf("argv[%d]=%s (%p)\n", i, argv[i]?argv[i]:"(NULL)", (void *)argv[i]);
    return 0;
}

That way, when you are playing with argument parsing and such things, you can see what it's getting. Note that it's showing both argv[0] (should be the name of the program) and argv[argc] (should be NULL).

--
Mats