strcpy(3) — Linux manual page

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | RETURN VALUE | ATTRIBUTES | CONFORMING TO | NOTES | BUGS | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON

STRCPY(3)               Linux Programmer's Manual              STRCPY(3)

NAME         top

       strcpy, strncpy - copy a string

SYNOPSIS         top

       #include <string.h>

       char *strcpy(char *restrict dest, const char *src);
       char *strncpy(char *restrict dest, const char *restrict src, size_t n);

DESCRIPTION         top

       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;
           }

RETURN VALUE         top

       The strcpy() and strncpy() functions return a pointer to the
       destination string dest.

ATTRIBUTES         top

       For an explanation of the terms used in this section, see
       attributes(7).

       ┌──────────────────────────────────────┬───────────────┬─────────┐
       │Interface                             Attribute     Value   │
       ├──────────────────────────────────────┼───────────────┼─────────┤
       │strcpy(), strncpy()                   │ Thread safety │ MT-Safe │
       └──────────────────────────────────────┴───────────────┴─────────┘

CONFORMING TO         top

       POSIX.1-2001, POSIX.1-2008, C89, C99, SVr4, 4.3BSD.

NOTES         top

       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 destination 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:

           if (buflen > 0) {
               strncpy(buf, str, buflen - 1);
               buf[buflen - 1]= '\0';
           }

       (Of course, the above technique ignores the fact that, if src
       contains 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 destination 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 standardized by
       POSIX, but is available on Linux via the libbsd library.

BUGS         top

       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.

SEE ALSO         top

       bcopy(3), memccpy(3), memcpy(3), memmove(3), stpcpy(3),
       stpncpy(3), strdup(3), string(3), wcscpy(3), wcsncpy(3)

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of release 5.13 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                            2021-03-22                      STRCPY(3)

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