C assign string from argv[] to char array - c

Question

I have the following code which reads an file name from the command line and opens this file:
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
int main(int argc, char **argv){
FILE *datei;
char filename[255];
//filename = argv[1];
//datei=fopen(filename, "r");
datei=fopen(argv[1], "r");
if(datei != NULL)
printf("File opened");
else{
printf("Fehler beim öffnen von %s\n", filename);
return EXIT_FAILURE;
}
return EXIT_SUCCESS;
}
This example works, but I want to write the string from the command line to the char array and pass that char array to to fopen(), but i get the compiler error
Error: assignment to expression with array type filename = argv[1];
What does this error mean and what can I do to fix it?

Answer 1

You must copy the string into the char array, this cannot be done with a simple assignment.
The simplistic answer is strcpy(filename, argv[1]);.
There is a big problem with this method: the command line parameter might be longer than the filename array, leading to a buffer overflow.
The correct answer therefore:
if (argc < 2) {
printf("missing filename\n");
exit(1);
}
if (strlen(argv[1]) >= sizeof(filename)) {
printf("filename too long: %s\n", argv[1]);
exit(1);
}
strcpy(filename, argv[1]);
...
You might want to output the error messages to stderr.
As a side note, you probably want to choose English or German, but not use both at the same time ;-)
An even simpler solution is to just keep a copy of the pointer argv[1] in a char *filename. Unless you modify it yourself, a very bad idea, its contents will not change for the duration of the program execution.
Here is a modified version:
#include <errno.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>
int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {
FILE *datei;
char *filename;
if (argc < 2) {
fprintf(stderr, "Fehlendes Dateiname-Befehlszeilenargument\n");
return EXIT_FAILURE;
}
filename = argv[1];
datei = fopen(filename, "r");
if (datei != NULL) {
printf("Datei erfolgreich geöffnet\n");
} else {
fprintf(stderr, "Fehler beim öffnen von %s: %s\n",
filename, strerror(errno));
return EXIT_FAILURE;
}
// ...
fclose(datei);
return EXIT_SUCCESS;
}