Main function's arguments, cant understand this!!!

Question

Why is my code under giving me back "Not a valid command" when i give the argument print ?

int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {

    printf("Argument 2 er %s\n", argv[1]);

    if(argv[1] == "print") {
        printf("Print kommando kalt");
    } else if(argv[1] == "random") {
        printf("Random kommando kalt");
    } else if(argv[1] == "replace") {
        printf("Replace kommando kalt");
    } else if(argv[1] == "remove") {
        printf("Remove kommando kalt");
    } else if(argv[1] == "len") {
        printf("øem kommando kalt");
    } else {
        printf("Ingen gyldig kommando\n");
    }
}

Answer 1

You cannot compare C strings using ==. This only does a pointer comparison. You need to use strcmp instead:

if (strcmp(argv[1], "print") == 0) …

Answer 2

Because you cannot compare strings like that in C.

You need to use:

if(strcmp(argv[1], "print") == 0)
  printf("Print kommando kalt\n");

And so on.

Also, make sure you don't access argv[1] without making sure it's really there and valid; if your program gets called with no arguments it will be NULL. You can use the value of argc to determine how many arguments you got.

Answer 3

Because argv[1] is a char*: something like 0xDEADBEEF
and "print" behaves as if it is another char*: something like 0xBADF00D

and 0xDEADBEEF != 0xBADF00D

You want to use strcmp() ( http://linux.die.net/man/3/strcmp )