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From: phil%rice@sri-unix.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.unix
Subject: Re: strncpy
Message-ID: <16889@sri-arpa.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 23-Feb-84 20:28:49 EST
Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.16889
Posted: Thu Feb 23 20:28:49 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 2-Mar-84 11:23:03 EST
Lines: 18

From:  William LeFebvre 

"strncpy" copies EXACTLY n characters, regardless of the length of
either string.  Some programs rely on this particular (some would say
peculiar) heuristic of "strncpy".  To change it would invite disaster.
If you need a function that does a "strncpy" but insures that "s1" is
null terminated, I suggest that you write your own and call it
something besides "strncpy".  All the functions in the str* family are
easy to duplicate.  Personally, I have frequently added a function
called "strecpy" which performs the same function as "strcpy" except
that it returns a pointer to the null byte in "s1" rather than the
beginning. I found this handy when I wanted to do a bunch of strcats in
a row.

				William LeFebvre
				Department of Mathematical Sciences
				Rice University