Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!bellcore!clyde!ima!haddock!karl
From: karl@haddock.ima.isc.com (Karl Heuer)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: strcpy
Message-ID: <13753@haddock.ima.isc.com>
Date: 19 Jun 89 19:54:50 GMT
References: <4400001@tdpvax> <13674@haddock.ima.isc.com> <2013@dataio.Data-IO.COM>
Reply-To: karl@haddock.ima.isc.com (Karl Heuer)
Organization: Interactive Systems, Boston
Lines: 20

In article <2013@dataio.Data-IO.COM> bright@dataio.Data-IO.COM (Walter Bright) writes:
>In article <13674@haddock.ima.isc.com> karl@haddock.ima.isc.com (Karl Heuer) writes:
>>	memmove(dest, src, strlen(src));
>
>	memmove(dest, src, strlen(src) + 1);

(I die.  My replacement reads my uncommented code and deletes a fragment he
doesn't understand.  Eventually the subroutine is sold to the government, and
the bug causes nuclear missles to be launched by accident.  The other side
retaliates, and all die.  O the embarrassment.)%

This is correct, of course; it only works to stop after strlen() if the
receiving buffer is known to have a null character in the appropriate spot.
Even if this were known information (e.g. if we're right-shifting a string in
a null-padded buffer), it's cheaper to use the +1 than to document why it
isn't necessary.

Karl W. Z. Heuer (ima!haddock!karl or karl@haddock.isc.com), The Walking Lint
________
% First person to identify the reference wins a defunct root password.