DOKK / manpages / debian 11 / ucspi-tcp / argv0.1.en
argv0(1) General Commands Manual argv0(1)

argv0 - runs a program with a specified 0th argument.

argv0 realname zero args

realname is one argument. zero is one argument. args is any number of arguments.

argv0 runs the program stored as realname on disk, with zero as the 0th argument (rather than realname) and args as the remaining arguments.

Some programs pay special attention to the 0th argument. argv0 makes these programs usable from shell scripts.

For example,

argv0 /bin/csh -csh

runs /bin/csh with a 0th argument of -csh. /bin/csh will think it is a login shell and behave accordingly.

As another example, the command

tcpserver 0 ftp argv0 tcpd ftpd -l -A

has a similar effect to the line

ftp stream tcp nowait root tcpd ftpd -l -A

in /etc/inetd.conf. The tcpd program is run with 0th argument ftpd and remaining arguments -l -A. Note that tcpd can and should be replaced by the -x option of tcpserver(1):

tcpserver -x ftp.tcp 0 ftp ftpd -l -A

tcpserver(1), tcprules(1), tcprulescheck(1), fixcrio(1), recordio(1), rblsmtpd(1), tcpclient(1), who@(1), date@(1), finger@(1), http@(1), tcpcat(1), mconnect(1), tcp-environ(5)

http://cr.yp.to/ucspi-tcp.html