Is there a way I could access program's args outside of main() without storing references to them?
Program arguments are stored within preserved space of the program, so I see no reason for not being able to access them. Maybe there is something like const char** get_program_arguments() and int get_program_arguments_count() but I cannot find it...
My problem comes from the fact that I am rewriting a library that is used now in many programs within the company, and I need to access these programs common arguments without changing them. For example I need program name, but I cannot use ::getenv("_") as they can be executed from various shells. I cannot use GNU extension because this needs to work on Linux, AIX, SunOS using gcc, CC and so on.
Some systems do provide access to the argument list, or at least argv[0]. But it’s common practice for main to mutate argc and argv during option processing, so there is no reliably correct answer as to what a global interface for them should return.
Add to that the general undesirability of global state, and the fact that it harms debugging to have whatever low-level functions attempt to analyze the arguments to a program they might know nothing about, and you end up with don’t do that. It’s not hard to pass arguments (or, better, meaningful flags that result from decoding them) to a library.