Question

I have a string array in C named args[] – now how can I use this list of arguments to construct a proper call to execl()?

So if the array contains:

{"/bin/ls","ls","-a","-l"} 

…how can I eventually construct an execl() call that is:

execl("/bin/ls","ls","-a","-l",NULL);

I must be thinking about this wrong, as I can’t find anything online, just talk about defining functions that can take a variable number of arguments.

Answer 1

Taken directly from “man execl”

The execv() and execvp() functions provide an array of pointers to
null-terminated strings that represent the argument list available to
the new program. The first argument, by convention, should point to
the filename associated with the file being executed. The array of
pointers must be terminated by a NULL pointer.

EDIT:
Here are the prototypes.

int execv(const char *path, char *const argv[]);
int execvp(const char *file, char *const argv[]);