Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!mit-eddie!ll-xn!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!ulysses!cjc
From: cjc@ulysses.homer.nj.att.com (Chris Calabrese[rs])
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: How does a program get its path name?
Message-ID: <10106@ulysses.homer.nj.att.com>
Date: 22 Feb 88 16:56:12 GMT
References: <11923@brl-adm.ARPA> <2933@sdsu.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill
Lines: 20
Summary: argv[0]

In article <2933@sdsu.UUCP>, turtle@sdsu.UUCP writes:
> 
> When a program executes, the full path to the executable file is kept in
> the zero-th argument.  If you have a declaration of main which looks like this:
> 	main(argc,argv)
> 	int	argc;
> 	char	*argv[];
> 
> then argv[0] is a pointer to the full path.
> Is this what you were looking for?

This is true only if the program was not found in the
current working directory, in which case argv[0] will contain
only the name of the program, not the full path.  Of course,
you can test to see if argv[0][0] != '/' and getcwd()
to find the full path name.

	Christopher Calabrese
	AT&T Bell Laboratories
	ulysses!cjc