Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!mcsun!hp4nl!orcenl!bengsig
From: bengsig@oracle.nl (Bjorn Engsig)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: strncpy
Keywords: strncpy null termination
Message-ID: <1006.nlhp3@oracle.nl>
Date: 21 Dec 89 14:54:10 GMT
References: <11509@csli.Stanford.EDU>
Reply-To: bengsig@oracle.nl (Bjorn Engsig)
Organization: ORACLE Europe, The Netherlands
Lines: 20

Article <11509@csli.Stanford.EDU> by poser@csli.Stanford.EDU (Bill Poser) says:
|
|	Why is it that strncpy(3) does not null terminate  ...
strncpy always copies exactly n characters to the destination string by null-
padding or truncating.  A similar behaviour is also found in a declaration like

  char thing[][3] = { "a", "ab", "abc", "de" };

where each element of thing is an array of 3 characters (i.e. thing[2] is
not null terminated, and puts(thing[2]) would print abcde).

A way to do a limited string copy is

  dst[0] = 0;
  strncat(dst,src,n);

since strncat always null-terminates.
-- 
Bjorn Engsig,	Domain:		bengsig@oracle.nl, bengsig@oracle.com
		Path:		uunet!{mcsun!orcenl,oracle}!bengsig