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From: davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.COM (Wm E Davidsen Jr)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: strncpy
Message-ID: <2034@crdos1.crd.ge.COM>
Date: 23 Jan 90 13:39:59 GMT
References: <e-mail_to_poser> <11527@csli.Stanford.EDU> <000003Q@cdis-1.UUCP> <11616@csli.Stanford.EDU> <48314938.f69e@phobos.UUCP> <11864@csli.Stanford.EDU> <25BC3A32.3F5B@marob.masa.com>
Reply-To: davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.com (bill davidsen)
Organization: GE Corp R&D Center, Schenectady NY
Lines: 19

In article <25BC3A32.3F5B@marob.masa.com> daveh@marob.masa.com (Dave Hammond) writes:

| From the Xenix manual page for string(S):
| 
| char *strncpy(S1,S2,N)
| ...
| strncpy copies exactly N characters, truncating or null-padding S2; the
| target may not be null-terminated if the length of S2 is N or more.
| ...

  Regardless of what the manual says, it does not seem to work that way.
The copy is *at most* N characters, but will stop is a null byte is
encountered. You can verify this by placing data after the null byte in
the source string and checking that it is not copied.

  I believe the procedure which functions as described is memcpy().
-- 
bill davidsen	(davidsen@crdos1.crd.GE.COM -or- uunet!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen)
            "Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me