well it looks like a console application, and those variables are used to tell what sort of command line paramaters were specified when the program was started, like a -n or /p whatever, nothing to do with OpenGL to tell you the truth.
I think its for command line arguements. Think you can specify window size and other parameters with the argument strings.
I usually put glutInit after I set the window size. So, in the event someone does pass a command line paramater it will use it instead before I create the window.
int argc, char **argv (which can also be written int argc, char *argv[], if you’ve seen that) ARE the command line options.
argc (argument count) indicates how many parameters you have, and argv (argument vector) is a vector of pointers to the strings containting the arguments. an example, Mr Music: