Which function builds argv ?

[Gribouillis]

Suppose that I have a program named myprog, and I type this in a shell

$ myprog -z hello -m "this is a message"

The function main in myprog will receive a char** argv containing the following strings

"-z", "hello", "-m", "this is a message"

So there must be somewhere in a C library a function which takes the command line string and produces the char** argv.
My question for you, C experts, is where is this function and how is it called ?

[dkalita]

The function main in myprog will receive a char** argv containing the following strings

"-z", "hello", "-m", "this is a message"

One small correction.
char** argv will contain

"myprog", "-z", "hello", "-m", "this is a message"

So there must be somewhere in a C library a function which takes the command line string and produces the char** argv.
My question for you, C experts, is where is this function and how is it called ?

I guess this part is done by the OS rather than a compiler.

[twomers]

I'm no assembly guru, but you might be able to find something were you to decompile it.

[Gribouillis]

Thanks for your replies. I think you're right, there are some functions related to this in OS source code, but they're not very useful. It would have been great to find a well known C function for this, but it probably doesn't exist.

[dkalita]

yes.
That is iterpreted and processed by the shell which sets the argv and forward to the executable binary file.

[Tom Gunn]

where is this function and how is it called ?

It is done by the C runtime. The same code that calls main() collects arguments from the command shell and parses them into an array of char pointers.

[Gribouillis]

It is done by the C runtime. The same code that calls main() collects arguments from the command shell and parses them into an array of char pointers.

I looked in the source code of gcc-4.3.2 and I found this

char **buildargv (const char *input)
{
  char *arg;
  char *copybuf;
  int squote = 0;
  int dquote = 0;
  int bsquote = 0;
  int argc = 0;
  int maxargc = 0;
  char **argv = NULL;
  char **nargv;

  if (input != NULL)
    {
      copybuf = (char *) alloca (strlen (input) + 1);
      /* Is a do{}while to always execute the loop once.  Always return an
	 argv, even for null strings.  See NOTES above, test case below. */
      do
	{
	  /* Pick off argv[argc] */
	  while (ISBLANK (*input))
	    {
	      input++;
	    }
	  if ((maxargc == 0) || (argc >= (maxargc - 1)))
	    {
	      /* argv needs initialization, or expansion */
	      if (argv == NULL)
		{
		  maxargc = INITIAL_MAXARGC;
		  nargv = (char **) malloc (maxargc * sizeof (char *));
		}
	      else
		{
		  maxargc *= 2;
		  nargv = (char **) realloc (argv, maxargc * sizeof (char *));
		}
	      if (nargv == NULL)
		{
		  if (argv != NULL)
		    {
		      freeargv (argv);
		      argv = NULL;
		    }
		  break;
		}
	      argv = nargv;
	      argv[argc] = NULL;
	    }
	  /* Begin scanning arg */
	  arg = copybuf;
	  while (*input != EOS)
	    {
	      if (ISSPACE (*input) && !squote && !dquote && !bsquote)
		{
		  break;
		}
	      else
		{
		  if (bsquote)
		    {
		      bsquote = 0;
		      *arg++ = *input;
		    }
		  else if (*input == '\\')
		    {
		      bsquote = 1;
		    }
		  else if (squote)
		    {
		      if (*input == '\'')
			{
			  squote = 0;
			}
		      else
			{
			  *arg++ = *input;
			}
		    }
		  else if (dquote)
		    {
		      if (*input == '"')
			{
			  dquote = 0;
			}
		      else
			{
			  *arg++ = *input;
			}
		    }
		  else
		    {
		      if (*input == '\'')
			{
			  squote = 1;
			}
		      else if (*input == '"')
			{
			  dquote = 1;
			}
		      else
			{
			  *arg++ = *input;
			}
		    }
		  input++;
		}
	    }
	  *arg = EOS;
	  argv[argc] = strdup (copybuf);
	  if (argv[argc] == NULL)
	    {
	      freeargv (argv);
	      argv = NULL;
	      break;
	    }
	  argc++;
	  argv[argc] = NULL;

	  while (ISSPACE (*input))
	    {
	      input++;
	    }
	}
      while (*input != EOS);
    }
  return (argv);
}

It's part of the gnu libiberty library :) . Thanks again to all of you !