Re: Finding the dump

[Paul Eggert]

On 1/29/19 12:50 AM, Richard Stallman wrote:
>    > When doing that, please consider the scenario where argv[0] does not
>    > have a directory part (i.e., does not have a '/' in POSIX). In this case
>    > in the past it has been reasonably common for argv[0] to not identify
>    > the executable that would be found by searching PATH for a file with
>    > that name, either because PATH itself has changed since the parent did
>    > the search, or because the program is being executed in a chrooted jail,
>    > or for some other reason. If this usage need not be supported by GNU
>    > programs it would be helpful to have that clearly stated.
>
> The case exists, but is there anything to be said about it there?
> I don't see anything.

Perhaps you could write something like the following?

Sometimes it is convenient for a program to determine the name of the 
file used to execute the program, in order to re-execute the program or 
to find other files near the executable file. In general argv[0] is not 
a reliable way to do this, as a program's invoker can set argv[0] to any 
string. In practice, if argv[0] contains a slash it normally names the 
executable; otherwise, for various reasons it might not name the 
executable even after searching through the directories named in the 
PATH environment variable. In any case if a program needs its 
installation location it is good practice to let the user specify it in 
some other way, such as via a command-line argument.