Xref: utzoo comp.std.c:554 comp.unix.questions:10608
Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!auspex!guy
From: guy@auspex.UUCP (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: comp.std.c,comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: bcopy
Message-ID: <669@auspex.UUCP>
Date: 10 Dec 88 07:09:42 GMT
References: <9095@smoke.BRL.MIL> <9167@ihlpb.ATT.COM> <1356@astroatc.UUCP>
Reply-To: guy@auspex.UUCP (Guy Harris)
Followup-To: comp.unix.questions
Organization: Auspex Systems, Santa Clara
Lines: 18

>[Sorry it this isn't the "perfect" group for this, but y'all were
> talking about index vs strchr so this can't be too far off.]

[Except "bcopy" isn't part of any ANSI C draft, so it's definitely not a
"C Standard" issue, it's more of a UNIX issue.  (The ANSI C drafts specify
"memcpy", and the S5 man page explicitly says that it's
implementation-dependent - "overlapping moves may yield surprises".)]

>What does the following mean?  [What should it do?]

It *appears* that the 4.3BSD implementation is intended not to yield
surprises.  The 4.3-tahoe documentation doesn't appear to make any such
claim (although the C-language version also appears to be intended not
to yield surprises).

Keith?  Chris?  If being unsurprising is intended to be a defined
characteristic of the interface, the man page should really state that,
so that implementors don't screw up.