Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!necntc!ima!haddock!karl
From: karl@haddock.ISC.COM (Karl Heuer)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: More on strcpy()
Message-ID: <3477@haddock.ISC.COM>
Date: 14 Apr 88 18:22:17 GMT
References: <7712@apple.Apple.Com> <7485@brl-smoke.ARPA> <10731@mimsy.UUCP> <4343@ihlpf.ATT.COM> <10987@mimsy.UUCP> <4383@ihlpf.ATT.COM> <904@mit-caf.UUCP>
Reply-To: karl@haddock.ima.isc.com (Karl Heuer)
Distribution: na
Organization: Interactive Systems, Boston
Lines: 9

In article <904@mit-caf.UUCP> vlcek@mit-caf.UUCP (Jim Vlcek) writes:
>Why not define strcpy() such that the destination is guaranteed to be
>equivalent to the original (before the move) source string?

Because, in order for this to work on both strcpy(s,s+1) and strcpy(s+1,s),
the implementation has to do extra work to guarantee nondestructiveness.  If
strcpy is being inline-expanded by the compiler, this can be a significant
overhead which is seldom necessary.

Karl W. Z. Heuer (ima!haddock!karl or karl@haddock.isc.com), The Walking Lint