Name
strcpy, strncpy — copy a string
Synopsis
#include <string.h>
char
*strcpy( |
char * |
dest, |
|
const char * |
src) ; |
char
*strncpy( |
char * |
dest, |
|
const char * |
src, |
|
size_t |
n) ; |
DESCRIPTION
The strcpy
() function copies
the string pointed to by src
(including the terminating
`\0' character) to the array pointed to by dest
. The strings may not
overlap, and the destination string dest
must be large enough to
receive the copy.
The strncpy
() function is
similar, except that not more than n
bytes of src
are copied. Thus, if there
is no null byte among the first n
bytes of src
, the result will not be
null-terminated.
In the case where the length of src
is less than that of
n
, the remainder of
dest
will be padded
with null bytes.
RETURN VALUE
The strcpy
() and
strncpy
() functions return a
pointer to the destination string dest
.
BUGS
If the destination string of a strcpy
() is not large enough (that is, if
the programmer was stupid/lazy, and failed to check the size
before copying) then anything might happen. Overflowing fixed
length strings is a favourite cracker technique.
CONFORMING TO
SVr4, 4.3BSD, C89, C99.
SEE ALSO
bcopy(3), memccpy(3), memcpy(3), memmove(3), wcscpy(3), wcsncpy(3)
Copyright (C) 1993 David Metcalfe (david@prism.demon.co.uk)
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Since the Linux kernel and libraries are constantly changing, this
manual page may be incorrect or out-of-date. The author(s) assume no
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the use of the information contained herein. The author(s) may not
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Formatted or processed versions of this manual, if unaccompanied by
the source, must acknowledge the copyright and authors of this work.
References consulted:
Linux libc source code
Lewine's _POSIX Programmer's Guide_ (O'Reilly & Associates, 1991)
386BSD man pages
Modified Sat Jul 24 18:06:49 1993 by Rik Faith (faith@cs.unc.edu)
Modified Fri Aug 25 23:17:51 1995 by Andries Brouwer (aeb@cwi.nl)
Modified Wed Dec 18 00:47:18 1996 by Andries Brouwer (aeb@cwi.nl)
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