ARGV

argv, short for argument vector, is an array of pointers to strings that holds the command-line arguments passed to a program at execution time. In C and related languages, the program’s main function commonly receives two parameters: argc, the argument count, and argv, the argument vector. argc is the number of arguments, including the program’s own name; argv is an array of length at least argc + 1, whose elements are pointers to null-terminated character strings. The element argv[0] typically contains the program name or path used to invoke the program, while argv[1] through argv[argc-1] hold the remaining user-supplied arguments. The element argv[argc] is guaranteed to be a null pointer.

Usage-wise, programs often iterate over arguments from i = 0 to i < argc to process all inputs, or start at i = 1 to skip the program name. The interpretation of the arguments is application-defined and commonly involves parsing flags and values (for example, options like -h or --help, followed by their associated values).

Language specifics may vary. In C and C++, main can be declared as int main(int argc, char *argv[]) or int main(int argc, char **argv). Some environments provide wide-character variants (such as wchar_t* argv[] on Windows) or alternative entry points. Other languages have similar concepts under different names; for instance, Java exposes command-line arguments via a String[] args parameter to main, not argv.

Notes: command-line arguments are supplied by the host environment (shell or launcher) and are subject to its parsing rules, including whitespace separation and quoting.