Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!asuvax!hrc!phobos!ellisond
From: ellisond@phobos.UUCP (Dell Ellison)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: strncpy
Summary: Actually ...
Message-ID: <48314938.f69e@phobos.UUCP>
Date: 22 Jan 90 20:09:02 GMT
References: <e-mail_to_poser> <11527@csli.Stanford.EDU> <000003Q@cdis-1.UUCP> <11616@csli.Stanford.EDU>
Organization: gte
Lines: 34

In article <11616@csli.Stanford.EDU>, poser@csli.Stanford.EDU (Bill Poser) writes:
> In article <000003Q@cdis-1.UUCP> tanner@cdis-1.UUCP (Dr. T. Andrews) writes:
> >Your consideration of strcpy()/strncpy() is more than a little
> >reminiscent of a man who has in hand a claw hammer and a ball peen
> >hammer, and who wishes to know why he can't pull nails with the
> >latter.
> 
> Not really. It's more like the question of why the carpentry shop
> has a ball peen hammer (used for metal working) and doesn't have
> a claw hammer. strncpy is a function evidently designed for use with
> fixed-length character buffers, not the null-terminated strings that
> are semi-standard in C. That makes one wonder why strncpy is included
> with functions that are intended for use with null-terminated strings,
> and why there is no "safe" copying function for the latter.
                                                                      
Actually, the reason why they are 'null-terminated strings' is because
they are variable in length.  If you are using strncpy then you want an
exact number of characters.  If you want n characters then you don't
want to get n+1 characters.  Besides, in C, nothing is completely safe.
I think we should all take responsability for our own strings. :-)