Handling command line flags in C/C++

Question

I am looking for a very simple explanation/tutorial on what flags are. I understand that flags work indicate a command what to do. For example:

rm -Rf test
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Answer 1

This simple program should demonstrate the arguments passed to the program (including the program name itself.)

Parsing, interpreting and using those arguments is up to the programmer (you), although there are libraries available to help:

int main(int argc, char* argv[])
{
    int i;
    for(i=0; i

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If you compile this program into a.out, and run it as:

prompt$>  ./a.out ParamOne ParamTwo -rf x.c

You should see output:

Argument 0 : a.out
Argument 1 : ParamOne
Argument 2 : ParamTwo
Argument 3 : -rf
Argument 4 : x.c