How to use _spawn or _exec for bootstrapping?

Question

After writing the following program, it does not appear to pass arguments to the called application. While researching _spawnv and what it can do, _execvp was found as what appeared to be a suitable alternative. Does anyone see the problem in the source code and know what needs to be done to fix it?

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <process.h>

int main(int argc, char** argv)
{
    int index;
    char** args;
    args = (char**) malloc((argc + 1) * sizeof(char*));
    args[0] = "boids.py";
    for (index = 1; index < argc; index++)
    {
        args[index - 1] = argv[index];
    }
    args[argc] = NULL;
    return _execvp("python", args);
}

Answer 1

The first argument in the argv vector is conventionally the fully qualified name of the executable to be started:

The _spawnv, _spawnve, _spawnvp, and _spawnvpe calls are useful when there is a variable number of arguments to the new process. Pointers to the arguments are passed as an array, argv. The argument argv[0] is usually a pointer to a path in real mode or to the program name in protected mode, and argv[1] through argv[n] are pointers to the character strings forming the new argument list. The argument argv[n +1] must be a NULL pointer to mark the end of the argument list.

(From MSDN)

Likewise:

The _execv, _execve, _execvp, and _execvpe calls are useful when the number of parameters to the new process is variable. Pointers to the parameters are passed as an array, argv. The parameter argv[0] is usually a pointer to cmdname. The parameters argv[1] through argv[n] point to the character strings forming the new parameter list. The parameter argv[n+1] must be a NULL pointer to mark the end of the parameter list.

(MSDN)