_spawn, _wspawn Functions

Each of the _spawn functions creates and executes a new process.

_spawnl, _wspawnl	_spawnv, _wspawnv
_spawnle, _wspawnle	_spawnve, _wspawnve
_spawnlp, _wspawnlp	_spawnvp, _wspawnvp
_spawnlpe, _wspawnlpe	_spawnvpe, _wspawnvpe

You can pass argument pointers as separate arguments (in _spawnl, _spawnle, _spawnlp, and _spawnlpe) or as an array of pointers (in _spawnv, _spawnve, _spawnvp, and _spawnvpe). You must pass at least one argument, arg0 or argv[0], to the spawned process. By convention, this argument is the name of the program as you would type it on the command line. A different value does not produce an error.

The _spawnv, _spawnve, _spawnvp, and _spawnvpe calls are useful when there is a variable number of arguments to the new process. Pointers to the arguments are passed as an array, argv. The argument argv[0] is usually a pointer to a path in real mode or to the program name in protected mode, and argv[1] through argv[n] are pointers to the character strings forming the new argument list. The argument argv[n +1] must be a NULL pointer to mark the end of the argument list.