Using argv

[Mentallic]

Hi there, I'm trying to make a program that takes a non-negative integer input from the terminal and then outputs all integers starting from 0 up to the input number.

I've ran into some problems however. Firstly, I was taught to use the atoi function to read what the number input for argv[1] is, but I've realized that if the user inputs a number, it'll return the correct value, however if the user inputs a non-numeric value, it returns 0, and this is stuffing me up.

What I have so far is something like this:

if ((argc != 2) || (argv[1] < '0')) {
    printf("error")
} else {
    printf("0,1,2...");
}

The problem is that

argv[1] < '0'

comparison. I'm unsure as to how I can check to see that argv[1] is a number or not, because I can't use atoi since it'll return 0, and I can't differentiate this 0 from the 0 I would get if the number input was 0.

[manasij7479]

argv[1] is a string, not a standalone char.
So, you'd need to loop around it and call isdigit on each of the characters in it, to check if all of them are numbers.

[Mentallic]

Hmm ok, I'll research more on strings.

[AndiPersti]

There is also strtol.
It has three arguments: the string to test, a pointer to pointer to char and the base of the number.

After the conversion, the second argument will point to the first character which couldn't be interpreted as a valid digit. If no conversion was done (no valid number) it points to the beginning of the string.

If you want to accept inputs like "100foo" to be interpreted as "100" you would test if the second argument points to the beginning:

 
int nr;
char *end_ptr;

nr = (int) strtol(argv[1], &end_ptr, 10);
if (end_ptr == argv[1])
   printf("Not a valid number!\n");

If you want to accept only valid numbers (all characters in the string must be consumed) you would test if the second argument points to the end of the string ('\0'):

 
int nr;
char *end_ptr;

nr = (int) strtol(argv[1], &end_ptr, 10);
if (*end_ptr != '\0')
   printf("Not a valid number!\n");

HTH, Andreas

[fnprintf]

I had to do a little research on strtol()... man strtol has a nice example.

How about something like this? Works like atoi(), but catches the '0'.

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

int main (int argc, char *argv[])
{
    if (argc != 2) printf ("Error:\n");
    else
    {
        int x = atoi (argv[1]);
        if (x == 0 && argv[1][0] != '0') printf ("Error:\n");
        else printf ("%d\n", x);
    }
    return 0;
}