There\'re certain cases when I really need strncpy()
funcitonalty - for example I have a function in a predefined interface that is passed an address of the buf
Trying to use str*cpy*()
functions for scenarios with a fixed destination buffer is a common misconception. The deal here is that those functions "copy until a null character or other condition occurs". In this scenario there's this code in place:
size_t actualLength = strlen( toCopy );
if( actualLength > length ) {
return E_UNEXPECTED; // doesn't fit, can't do anything reasonable
}
and so the code knows the actual string length before it proceeds to copying. And once length is known it only makes sense to use memcpy()
which is straightforward and concise for such scenarios and as a side effect also faster since it is allowed to copy more than one character at a time and doesn't check each character for null terminator.
HRESULT someFunction( char* buffer, size_t length )
{
const char* toCopy = ...
size_t actualLength = strlen( toCopy );
if( actualLength > length ) {
return E_UNEXPECTED; // doesn't fit, can't do anything reasonable
}
memcpy( buffer, toCopy, min( length, actualLength + 1 ) );
return S_OK;
}
So the solution is to just forget both strncpy()
and strncpy_s()
and use memcpy()
instead.