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NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | RETURN VALUE | ATTRIBUTES | CONFORMING TO | NOTES | BUGS | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON |
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STRCPY(3) Linux Programmer's Manual STRCPY(3)
strcpy, strncpy - copy a string
#include <string.h>
char *strcpy(char *dest, const char *src);
char *strncpy(char *dest, const char *src, size_t n);
The strcpy() function copies the string pointed to by src, including
the terminating null byte ('\0'), to the buffer pointed to by dest.
The strings may not overlap, and the destination string dest must be
large enough to receive the copy. Beware of buffer overruns! (See
BUGS.)
The strncpy() function is similar, except that at most n bytes of src
are copied. Warning: If there is no null byte among the first n
bytes of src, the string placed in dest will not be null-terminated.
If the length of src is less than n, strncpy() writes additional null
bytes to dest to ensure that a total of n bytes are written.
A simple implementation of strncpy() might be:
char *
strncpy(char *dest, const char *src, size_t n)
{
size_t i;
for (i = 0; i < n && src[i] != '\0'; i++)
dest[i] = src[i];
for ( ; i < n; i++)
dest[i] = '\0';
return dest;
}
The strcpy() and strncpy() functions return a pointer to the
destination string dest.
For an explanation of the terms used in this section, see
attributes(7).
┌────────────────────┬───────────────┬─────────┐
│Interface │ Attribute │ Value │
├────────────────────┼───────────────┼─────────┤
│strcpy(), strncpy() │ Thread safety │ MT-Safe │
└────────────────────┴───────────────┴─────────┘
POSIX.1-2001, POSIX.1-2008, C89, C99, SVr4, 4.3BSD.
Some programmers consider strncpy() to be inefficient and error
prone. If the programmer knows (i.e., includes code to test!) that
the size of dest is greater than the length of src, then strcpy() can
be used.
One valid (and intended) use of strncpy() is to copy a C string to a
fixed-length buffer while ensuring both that the buffer is not
overflowed and that unused bytes in the target buffer are zeroed out
(perhaps to prevent information leaks if the buffer is to be written
to media or transmitted to another process via an interprocess
communication technique).
If there is no terminating null byte in the first n bytes of src,
strncpy() produces an unterminated string in dest. If buf has length
buflen, you can force termination using something like the following:
strncpy(buf, str, buflen - 1);
if (buflen > 0)
buf[buflen - 1]= '\0';
(Of course, the above technique ignores the fact that, if src con‐
tains more than buflen - 1 bytes, information is lost in the copying
to dest.)
strlcpy()
Some systems (the BSDs, Solaris, and others) provide the following
function:
size_t strlcpy(char *dest, const char *src, size_t size);
This function is similar to strncpy(), but it copies at most size-1
bytes to dest, always adds a terminating null byte, and does not pad
the target with (further) null bytes. This function fixes some of
the problems of strcpy() and strncpy(), but the caller must still
handle the possibility of data loss if size is too small. The return
value of the function is the length of src, which allows truncation
to be easily detected: if the return value is greater than or equal
to size, truncation occurred. If loss of data matters, the caller
must either check the arguments before the call, or test the function
return value. strlcpy() is not present in glibc and is not standard‐
ized by POSIX, but is available on Linux via the libbsd library.
If the destination string of a strcpy() is not large enough, then
anything might happen. Overflowing fixed-length string buffers is a
favorite cracker technique for taking complete control of the
machine. Any time a program reads or copies data into a buffer, the
program first needs to check that there's enough space. This may be
unnecessary if you can show that overflow is impossible, but be
careful: programs can get changed over time, in ways that may make
the impossible possible.
bcopy(3), memccpy(3), memcpy(3), memmove(3), stpcpy(3), stpncpy(3),
strdup(3), string(3), wcscpy(3), wcsncpy(3)
This page is part of release 4.15 of the Linux man-pages project. A
description of the project, information about reporting bugs, and the
latest version of this page, can be found at
https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.
GNU 2017-09-15 STRCPY(3)
Pages that refer to this page: bcopy(3), memccpy(3), memcpy(3), memmove(3), stpcpy(3), stpncpy(3), strcat(3), string(3), wcpcpy(3), wcscpy(3), wcsncpy(3), feature_test_macros(7), signal-safety(7)
Copyright and license for this manual page
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