Command-line arguments differ between interpreted and juliac compiled code.

[djpeaco]

Code compiled with juliac in the latest 1.12 rc includes the executable name as the first argument, while the same code run with the normal julia interpreter (JIT) does not. For example, given the following program arg_index.jl:

function @main(args::Vector{String})::Cint
    for i in eachindex(args)
        println(Core.stdout, string(i), ") ", args[i])
    end
    return 0
end

$ julia +1.12 arg_index.jl foo
1) foo

$ julia +1.12 $HOME/.julia/juliaup/julia-1.12.0-rc1+0.x64.linux.gnu/share/julia/juliac/juliac.jl --output-exe arg_index --experimental --trim arg_index.jl
$ ./arg_index foo
1) ./arg_index
2) foo

Tested in:

Julia Version 1.12.0-rc1
Commit 228edd6610b (2025-07-12 20:11 UTC)
Build Info:
  Official https://julialang.org release
Platform Info:
  OS: Linux (x86_64-linux-gnu)
  CPU: 6 × Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-8600 CPU @ 3.10GHz
  WORD_SIZE: 64
  LLVM: libLLVM-18.1.7 (ORCJIT, skylake)
  GC: Built with stock GC
Threads: 1 default, 1 interactive, 1 GC (on 6 virtual cores)

[djpeaco]

Also, the globals ARGS and PROGRAM_FILE aren't set in the compiled version.

[JeffBezanson]

Good catch. For scripts it seems pretty clear the executable name should be there as in C, so we should add something in the other case. The problem is the -m case; I guess we can use the same value as PROGRAM_FILE which is the empty string.

As for the globals I think we should phase them out in favor of the argument to main, so I am ok with that.

[JeffBezanson]

OK, since main has been out since 1.11 I won't do that and will change juliac instead.

[djpeaco]

Thanks! I am very excited about juliac, and really appreciate all the hard work going into it.