On Sun, Mar 14, 2010 at 6:42 PM, Kyle Sluder <kyle.slu...@gmail.com> wrote: > This is incorrect. Unix convention requires the program name be the > first argument.
Just to clarify, there are a couple reasons for this. The first is that one can use a single binary to implement more than one command line program. Which identity the program adopts is determined by the value of argv[ 0 ]. If you don't supply argv[ 0 ] at all, the program may not know what to do. The identity is supplied by symbolically linking the extra identities, with the link's name being the program you want it to act as. For example, the bash shell has lots of extra features that the traditional Bourne shell doesn't provide. But if you execute bash as /bin/sh, it runs in Bourne-shell compatible mode, and doesn't provide any of those extra features. A more extreme example is BusyBox, a single executable which implements dozens of command-line programs for embedded Linux systems. This saves quite a lot of both filesystem and virtual memory space by providing just one implementation of a lot of common functionality. The other reason is that some programs use argv[ 0 ] in error messages, to give the name of the program. That way you can name the executable anything you like, and error messages will always be correct. Don Quixote -- Don Quixote de la Mancha quix...@dulcineatech.com http://www.dulcineatech.com Dulcinea Technologies Corporation: Software of Elegance and Beauty. _______________________________________________ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
