void print_help()
{
        printf("usage:\n") ;
        printf("\t\t-i set input file\n") ;
        printf("\t\t-o set output file\n") ;
        printf("\t\t-c set config file\n") ;
        printf("\t\t-h print this help information\n") ;
        printf("\t\t-v print version\n") ;
}
 char* input_file = NULL ;
        char *query=NULL;
          char opt_char=0;
        while ((opt_char = getopt(argc, argv, "i:q:vh")) != -1)
        {
                switch(opt_char)
                {
                        case 'h':
                                print_help();
                                exit(-1);
                                break;
                        case 'v':
                                print_version() ;
                                exit(-1) ;
                                break ;
                        case 'i':
                                input_file= optarg ;
                                break ;
                        case 'q':
                                query= optarg ;
                                break ;
                        default:
                                print_help();
                                exit(-1);
                                break;
                }
        }

http://snippets.dzone.com/posts/show/6850

This is a simple bit of code to show how you can use the "getopt()" function to parse input arguments without headaches.

Using getopt() to parse input arguments in C

C