CODEWITHSUNDEEP
clinuxexec
kiba.levar
kiba.levar

Reputation: 33

Why execvp accepts 2 arguments

Assume the following code in c:

#include <unistd.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

int main(int argc, char * argv[]) {
  char *args[] = {"/bin/echo", "1", NULL};
  execvp(args[0], args);
}

Why does execvp accept 2 arguments? Why can't it be execvp(args) and internally it would automatically grab the executable to run from args[0] ?

Upvotes: 3

Views: 287

Answers (1)

Some programmer dude
Some programmer dude

Reputation: 409364

What if you want the "name" of the process (args[0] in your case) to be different from the actual executable program? That is a valid use-case, and the simplest solution to handle both the cases is the two-argument execvp we now have.

Upvotes: 3

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