Modeling with Data

Tip 80: Send in parameters fast

10 March 12. [link]

level: your program has options for users
purpose: Get options with zero overhead

Part of a series of tips on POSIX and C. Start from the tip intro page, or get 21st Century C, the book based on this series.

OK, there isn't zero overhead: you will need

#include <stdlib.h>

at the top of your program. Once you have that, you can get environment variables from the user with getenv.

For the purposes of an example, let us print a message to the screen as often as the user desires. The message is set via the environment variable msg and the number of repetitions via reps. Notice how we set defaults for both (at 10 and “Hello.”) should getenv return NULL.

#include <stdlib.h> //getenv
#include <stdio.h>  //printf

int main(){
    char *repstext=getenv("reps");
    int reps = repstext ? atoi(repstext) : 10;

    char *msg = getenv("msg"); 
    if (!msg) msg = "Hello.";

    for (int i=0; i< reps; i++)
        printf("%s\n", msg);
}

Usage, if the program compiled to a.out:

reps=10 msg="Ha" ./a.out
msg="Ha" ./a.out
reps=20 msg=" " ./a.out

The trick here on the command line is that you can set environment variables to be sent to a program on the same command line as the program call. You might find this to be odd--the inputs to a program should come after the program name, darn it--but the oddness aside, you can see that it took roughly zero set up within the program itself, and we get to have named parameters on the command line almost for free.

This is a nice way to get parameters in quickly, and then when your program is a little further along, you can use getopt to do them the usual way.

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Modeling With Data

Tip 80: Send in parameters fast