Perhaps this short article on an alternate form of the main() header will
help:

"In many example programs, the parameters to main are left off (they are
optional) and so you may have never been exposed to the complete use of
main().

The full syntax for main is:

  int main(int argc, char* argv[]);

....where argc is the "argument count" ("argument" applying to command-line
arguments) and argv is an array of argc elements, each a pointer to a
command line argument (as a string, of course).  The first element is
always the program's own name.

For example, if you had a program called FOO.EXE that you had started by
entering...

   FOO /a /b "my argument"

....on the command-line, you could access the command-line arguments in
your code like so...

  int main(int argc, char* argv[])
     {
     int   iArgCount = argc;     // equal to 4
     char* pszProg   = argv[0];  // points to something like "FOO.EXE"
     char* pszArg1   = argv[1];  // points to "/a"
     char* pszArg2   = argv[2];  // points to "/b"
     char* pszArg3   = argv[3];  // points to "my argument"

          .
          .
     }

If you need access to the arguments later in your program, you can either
copy them or just keep pointers to them (as the parameters to main() must
necessarily remain valid for the entire course of your program's execution).
Part of the way argv[] works is that anything enclosed in quotes (like
"my argument" in the above example) is treated as a single argument. "