Jorgen Grahn wrote:
> On Mon, 2012-02-20, Keith Thompson wrote:
> > The point is that strncpy is a very different function from strcpy.
> > It is not intended to work with a *string* in the target array;
> > it works with a specialized data structure (used to store file
> > names in very early Unix systems).
>
> Malcolm McLean wrote something similar upthread. Do you have any
> references for this?
>
> It would explain the function's weird semantics, but I haven't seen
> anything before which says this is its background. (There's also
> wcsncpy() for wchar_t -- that one is certainly newer, and useless in
> the data structures you mention.)

I've never seen a reference for that either, but I guessed that this was
its purpose when I first learned the sematics of the function, oh, about
30 years ago, and I've assumed that ever since. Fixed-length Unix file
names are the only place I know of where a string buffer had to be
padded out to its full length with nulls.

> > I think you're understating the differences between strcpy and
> > strncpy. The strncpy function is radically different from strcpy,
> > and there are very few legitimate uses for it. On the other hand,
> > the deceptive name has led many C programmers to use it incorrectly,
> > and I strongly suspect that it's used incorrectly far more often
> > than it's used correctly.
>
> The static analysis tool we use at work screams bloody murder every
> time I use strcpy() and tells me to use strncpy() instead. Argh ...

Aargh! Well, presumably a non-broken fix will shut it up just as well.