strncpy

[phil%rice at sri-unix.UUCP]

From:  William LeFebvre <phil at rice>

"strncpy" copies EXACTLY n characters, regardless of the length of
either string.  Some programs rely on this particular (some would say
peculiar) heuristic of "strncpy".  To change it would invite disaster.
If you need a function that does a "strncpy" but insures that "s1" is
null terminated, I suggest that you write your own and call it
something besides "strncpy".  All the functions in the str* family are
easy to duplicate.  Personally, I have frequently added a function
called "strecpy" which performs the same function as "strcpy" except
that it returns a pointer to the null byte in "s1" rather than the
beginning. I found this handy when I wanted to do a bunch of strcats in
a row.

				William LeFebvre
				Department of Mathematical Sciences
				Rice University
				<phil at rice>