Passing URL through Command Line(C++) - c++

Question

I have c++ code which parses 2 command line arguments and prints the arguments. One of the argument is an URL of google search. I paste the code below
int main(int argc, char* argv[])
{
std::cout << argv[1] << argv[2] << "\n";
}
When I pass URL through command line after compilation as below,
./demo 1 https://www.google.co.in/search?sourceid=chrome-psyapi2&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8&client=ubuntu&q=size%20of%20unsigned%20char%20array%20c%2B%2B&oq=length%20of%20unsigned%20char*%20arra&aqs=chrome.4.69i57j0l5.13353j0j7
I get the output as,
[1] 8680
[2] 8681
[3] 8682
[4] 8683
[5] 8684
[6] 8685
[7] 8686
[2] Done ion=1
[3] Done espv=2
[4] Done ie=UTF-8
[6]- Done q=size%20of%20unsigned%20char%20array%20c%2B%2B
It looks like there has been some internal splitting of the string. Is there any way I can retrieve the entire string?
Thank You in advance.

Answer 1

You have to quote it. Otherwise & gets interpreted by the shell as "invoke what's on the left of & in background".
I took the privilege of replacing your program with echo.
Good:
$ echo "https://www.google.co.in/search?sourceid=chrome-psyapi2&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8&client=ubuntu&q=size%20of%20unsigned%20char%20array%20c%2B%2B&oq=length%20of%20unsigned%20char*%20arra&aqs=chrome.4.69i57j0l5.13353j0j7"
https://www.google.co.in/search?sourceid=chrome-psyapi2&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8&client=ubuntu&q=size%20of%20unsigned%20char%20array%20c%2B%2B&oq=length%20of%20unsigned%20char*%20arra&aqs=chrome.4.69i57j0l5.13353j0j7
Bad:
$ echo https://www.google.co.in/search?sourceid=chrome-psyapi2&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8&client=ubuntu&q=size%20of%20unsigned%20char%20array%20c%2B%2B&oq=length%20of%20unsigned%20char*%20arra&aqs=chrome.4.69i57j0l5.13353j0j7
[1] 21705
[2] 21706
https://www.google.co.in/search?sourceid=chrome-psyapi2
[3] 21707
[4] 21708
[5] 21709
[6] 21710
[7] 21711
[1] Done echo https://www.google.co.in/search?sourceid=chrome-psyapi2
[2] Done ion=1
[3] Done espv=2
[4] Done ie=UTF-8
[5] Done client=ubuntu
[6]- Done q=size%20of%20unsigned%20char%20array%20c%2B%2B
[7]+ Done oq=length%20of%20unsigned%20char*%20arra

Answer 2

You need to quote the argument, and you should use single quotes, ', in order to stop your shell from attempting to evaluate anything inside it.
What happens is that every ampersand, "&", on your command line launches a background process.
The first process is ./demo 1 https://www.google.co.in/search?sourceid=chrome-psyapi2, and all the following are assignments to variables.
You can see from the output (it looks like you didn't post all of it)
[1] 8680
[2] 8681
[3] 8682
[4] 8683
[5] 8684
[6] 8685
[7] 8686
[2] Done ion=1
[3] Done espv=2
[4] Done ie=UTF-8
[6]- Done q=size%20of%20unsigned%20char%20array%20c%2B%2B
that background process 2 is ion=1 (pid 8681), process 3 (pid 8682) is espv=2, and so on.