why do arguments exist in unix? I mean, can't it all

>>59447436
It's a conspiracy. Blame Molyneaux.

>>59447436
I like arguments. Even if we had to use stdin for everything I would just build my own argument system. There is no other effective way to control a complex CLI program without it being slow as shit. Just go look at the man page for nmap.

>>59447436
to separate stdin from arguments.

>>59447436
argc and argv[] are very useful tho

>>59447436

how the fuck would sed work without arguments

>>59447436
Separating configuration from data flow is a good thing anon.

If it was all to do over, I would probably change the format they use, so many things use getopt when we could just have a more idiomatic standard data structure.

>>59448844
Like wire protocols, with separators.
It's all contiguous memory set by the os anyways.

While we're on the topic, I know that

argv[argc] == NULL

is guaranteed by the standard, but what about

argv[argc+1]

and so on? Are those guaranteed NULL as well?

>>59449715
No. They are undefined.