Thread: passing parameters to main

I'm writing a little perl program that calls a c program. I want to pass a variable from perl into the c program. I tried it like this(in a very simplified example):

in perl:
@data=`Cprog.exe number`; #number is the varaible sent to C
...

in C:

int main(int argc, char* argv)
{

cout<<"Number is equal to: "<<argv[0]<<endl;
return 0;
}

When I print out data in the perl program, it outputs that funny y character with two dots over it. None of my C books have anything on main's parameters, so I can't find help there. Any ideas?

Despite the comments, it is a c++ program (note the cout)

> it outputs that funny y character with two dots over it
This will be EOF (usually -1), cast to a char (usually 255)


> int main(int argc, char* argv)
Should be
int main(int argc, char *argv[] )

> cout<<"Number is equal to: "<<argv[0]<<endl;
If you want to output the first parameter, it would be
cout<<"Number is equal to: "<<argv[1]<<endl;

> None of my C books have anything on main's parameters
They're all crap books then - this is basic information.

dude(quantizi), thanks for the advice...

thanks salem, I'll give that a try. Two of my c++ (is that better quan?) books are from class and one is "core C++ a software engineering approach", I couldn't find the answers in there, but I just found exactly what you said to do in a reference book that I forgot I had. Thanks!