Copyright © 2009 Peter Miller
I have spent the last 2 days trying to understand the execlp()
system call, but yet here I am. Let me get straight to the issue.
The man page
of execlp declares the system call as int execlp(const char *file, const char *arg, ..);
with the description: The const char arg and subsequent ellipses in the execl(), execlp(), and execle() functions can be thought of as arg0, arg1, .., argn.
Yet I see the system call being called like this in our text book: execlp(“/bin/sh”, .., “ls -l /bin/??”, ..);
(the " ..'="" are="" for="" us="" to="" figure="" out="" as="" students).="" however="" this="" system="" call="" doesn´t="" even="" resemble="" anything="" like="" the="" declaration="" on="">man page
of the system call.
I am super confused. Any help is appreciated.
Anthony Geogheganthis prototype:
Says that execlp ìs a variable argument function. It takes 2 const char *
. The rest of the arguments, if any, are the additional arguments to hand over to program we want to run - also char *
- all these are C strings (and the last argument must be a NULL pointer)
So, the file
argument is the path name of an executable file to be executed. arg
is the string we want to appear as argv[0]
in the executable. By convention, argv[0]
is just the file name of the executable, normally it's set to the same as file
.
The ..
are now the additional arguments to give to the executable.
Say you run this from a commandline/shell:
That'd be execlp('ls', 'ls', (char *)NULL);
Or if you run
That'd be execlp('ls', 'ls', '-l', '/', (char *)NULL);
So on to execlp('/bin/sh', .., 'ls -l /bin/??', ..);
Here you are going to the shell, /bin/sh , and you're giving the shell a command to execute. That command is 'ls -l /bin/??'. You can run that manually from a commandline/shell:
Now, how do you run a shell and tell it to execute a command ? You open up the documentation/man page for your shell and read it.
What you want to run is:
This becomes
Side note:The /bin/??
is doing pattern matching, this pattern matching is done by the shell, and it expands to all files under /bin/ with 2 characters. If you simply did
Probably nothing would happen (unless there's a file actually named /bin/??
) as there's no shell that interprets and expands /bin/??
The limitation of execl is that when executing a shell command or any other script that is not in the current working directory, then we have to pass the full path of the command or the script. Example:
Once that is done, restart the program and the Shockwave games will appear.Q5) I want to play this game, but it’s neither in Flashpoint nor the Game Master List!A5) This means that game has not been added to Flashpoint yet. Note that to edit the Google Doc file, you need to request permission first.Even if you have been granted editing privileges, pls check whether the game you want has already been requested before. If there are games you want to be in Flashpoint, you can either wait for it to appear in later versions, or put up a request using the link in Q2.
The workaround to passing the full path of the executable is to use the function execlp, that searches for the file (1st argument of execlp) in those directories pointed by PATH:
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