Why does MPI_Init accept pointers to argc and argv?

Question

this is how we use MPI_Init function

int main(int argc, char **argv)
{
    MPI_Init(&argc, &argv);
…
}

why does MPI_Init use pointe

Answer 1

According to OpenMPI man pages: MPI_Init(3) man page

Open MPI accepts the C/C++ argc and argv arguments to main, but neither modifies, interprets, nor distributes them.