Processing command line arguments

[John_L]

I want my program to loop until there are no more command line arguments to process. Or do nothing if no arguments were entered. The command line arguments will be files that need to be read in. The user would be able to enter multiple files to be read in, or 1..or even none.

int main( int argc, char *argv[] )
{
    //how can I tell if any arguments exist in the command line?
    
    for( i=0; i < number of command line arguments; i++ )//how can i tell how many there are to process?
    {
         input = fopen( argv[i], "r" ); //try reading the file passed as an argument in command line
    }
}

is it argc that contains the number of paramters entered in command line? When you type the program name, i.e program parameter1 paramter2...is the program name a parameter as well? would you start from argv[1] instead of argv[0] ?

[hk_mp5kpdw]

is it argc that contains the number of paramters entered in command line? When you type the program name, i.e program parameter1 paramter2...is the program name a parameter as well? would you start from argv[1] instead of argv[0] ?

Yes, argc (or whatever name you call that parameter) contains the number of command-line arguments. This is always at least 1, the name (and path?) of the program that is running. argv[0] is the program name, if argc is at least 2, then there are other arguments available for you to examine/process starting at argv[1].

[matsp]

argc contains that number.

Also, the FIRST argument, argv[0], is "the name of your program", so you need to start at 1, not zero for this particular type of loop. [It's the exception, really].

--
Mats

[John_L]

thanks. I was messing around and trying it out and when i was processing argv[0] i was getting wacky output so i assumed the program name was always the first parameter. I got it working great now. Thanks.

p.s. is there a drawback to reading from command line, maybe I should give the user the option, make stdin available as well?

[matsp]

It is common that programs that take command line arguments also allow standard in as input, there are two forms:
1. No argument means stdin is the input.
2. An argument of "-" means stdin.

There is no reason to not support BOTH of those if you like to do that - that way, it works like most people would expect in all circumstances.

--
Mats

[whiteflags]

argv[0] must be a pointer to a valid string if argc is greater than zero, or NULL otherwise. What that string is doesn't matter, anything from an empty string to the executable's name is as likely and valid as far as standards are concerned. It's sort of important that the standards make that distinction as well, because there are more than enough ways to start an executable.

There isn't really a drawback to using command line arguments, though I would expect most people would have the design sense to know what to read from stdin. Often if you're working with separate files, you have to use the command line to some extent so that you can easily interact with the user and work with the files at the same time.