// illustration of use of command-line arguments // main() has two arguments dealing with the command line, which we // usually name argc and argv; the latter is an array of strings, i.e. // of type char *[], or more succinctly, char **; argc is then the count // of the number of command-line arguments // suppose there are two command-line arguments, one a string and the // other an integer, so that for example the program command line might // look like // % a.out abc 12 // then argv[1] would be "abc" and argv[2] would be "12" // argv[0] is the program name, in this case a.out main(int argc, char **argv) { char *s; int x; strcpy(s,argv[1]); // OK, we've got the first string, but the second is intended to be an // integer, so we must convert it; the usual way to do this is the // atoi() function ("ASCII to integer") from the C library; it // converts a string to an integer x = atoi(argv[2]); ... // and then do whatever with s and x }