Gate | Gate CS 2012 | Question 27

Gate | Gate CS 2012 | Question 27 is a technical question that tests the knowledge of programming and data structures. It is one of the challenging questions in the exam and requires a deep understanding of the problem and the ability to create an efficient solution.

Problem Statement

Consider the following program:

#include <stdio.h>
int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
  int i;
  printf("%d",argc);
  for(i=0;i<argc;i++)
    printf("%s", argv[i]);
  return 0;
}

What will be the output of the program when it is executed with command-line arguments "gate cs 2012"?

Solution

When the program is executed with command-line arguments "gate cs 2012", the output will be:

4gatecs2012

Explanation:

The first printf statement will print the value of argc, which is the number of command-line arguments passed to the program. In this case, there are four command-line arguments: ./a.out, gate, cs and 2012.

The for loop will iterate over the argc argument vector (argv) and print each of the arguments passed to the program. The first argument, ./a.out, is not printed as it is the name of the executable binary file.

The output of the program will therefore be the concatenation of the number of command-line arguments and all the arguments passed to the program, with no whitespace between them.

Time Complexity

The time complexity of the program is O(n), where n is the number of command-line arguments passed to the program. This is because the for loop iterates over the argument vector once, printing each argument.

Space Complexity

The space complexity of the program is O(1), as the program uses a constant amount of memory irrespective of the number of command-line arguments passed to the program.

Conclusion

Gate | Gate CS 2012 | Question 27 is a challenging question that requires a deep understanding of programming and data structures. The solution presented here demonstrates the use of command-line arguments, the argc and argv parameters, and the use of loops to iterate over arrays. The time complexity and space complexity of the program have also been analyzed.