How do I find the location of the executable in C? [duplicate]

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To summarize:

  • On Unixes with /proc really straight and realiable way is to:

    • readlink("/proc/self/exe", buf, bufsize) (Linux)

    • readlink("/proc/curproc/file", buf, bufsize) (FreeBSD)

    • readlink("/proc/self/path/a.out", buf, bufsize) (Solaris)

  • On Unixes without /proc (i.e. if above fails):

    • If argv[0] starts with “https://stackoverflow.com/” (absolute path) this is the path.

    • Otherwise if argv[0] contains “https://stackoverflow.com/” (relative path) append it to cwd
      (assuming it hasn’t been changed yet).

    • Otherwise search directories in $PATH for executable argv[0].

    Afterwards it may be reasonable to check whether the executable isn’t actually a symlink.
    If it is resolve it relative to the symlink directory.

    This step is not necessary in /proc method (at least for Linux).
    There the proc symlink points directly to executable.

    Note that it is up to the calling process to set argv[0] correctly.
    It is right most of the times however there are occasions when the calling process cannot be trusted (ex. setuid executable).

  • On Windows: use GetModuleFileName(NULL, buf, bufsize)

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