How do I set the command line arguments in a C program so that it's visible when users type “ps aux”?

Question

When you type \"ps aux\" the ps command shows command arguments that the program was run with. Some programs change this as a way of indicating status. I\'ve tried changing

Answer 1

You had the right idea, but you don't change the pointers in argv[n], you must change the string pointed to by argv[0] itself:

#include 
#include 

int main(int argc,char **argv)
{
    size_t maxlen = strlen(argv[0]);

    memset(argv[0], 0, maxlen);
    strncat(argv[0], "Hi Mom!", maxlen);
    pause();

    return 0;
}

(Note that whether or not this actually changes the command name shown by ps is system-dependent).