Get the current process (executable) name in Go?

Question

What I am looking for here is the equivalent of C's argv[0].

The flag package only gives access to command line arguments, but not the executable name.

While one can get the process with Getpid(), I haven't found something that will give me access to the whole command line. The syscall command GetCommandLine() seems only to be available on Windows.

Kissaki · Accepted Answer · 2011-02-04 17:26:05Z

45

The traditional argv[0] in C is available in os.Args[0] in Go. The flags package simply processes the slice os.Args[1:]

edited Feb 4, 2011 at 17:26

Kissaki

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answered Jan 31, 2011 at 12:03

nos

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Dmitriy Botov · Accepted Answer · 2023-05-21 18:43:05Z

36

A better way as follows:

filename := filepath.Base(os.Args[0])

This will present only the application name and remove the path for you.

edited May 21, 2023 at 18:43

Dmitriy Botov

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answered Nov 6, 2019 at 9:19

Cyberience

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Rodolfo Carvalho · Accepted Answer · 2020-02-12 18:27:01Z

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Since Go 1.8, the answer is os.Executable(). Similar to other languages, there is also os.Args[0]. One important distinction is that os.Executable() is guaranteed to return an absolute path.

answered Feb 12, 2020 at 18:27

Rodolfo Carvalho

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1 Comment

Sue Mynott Over a year ago

Thanks. I hadn't noticed that. Most of the time I want os.Args[0], but it's useful to know about os.Executable().

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