function
<cstring>

strncpy

char * strncpy ( char * destination, const char * source, size_t num );
Copy characters from string
Copies the first num characters of source to destination. If the end of the source C string (which is signaled by a null-character) is found before num characters have been copied, destination is padded with zeros until a total of num characters have been written to it.

No null-character is implicitly appended at the end of destination if source is longer than num. Thus, in this case, destination shall not be considered a null terminated C string (reading it as such would overflow).

destination and source shall not overlap (see memmove for a safer alternative when overlapping).

Parameters

destination
Pointer to the destination array where the content is to be copied.
source
C string to be copied.
num
Maximum number of characters to be copied from source.
size_t is an unsigned integral type.

Return Value

destination is returned.

Example

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
 
/* strncpy example */
#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>

int main ()
{
  char str1[]= "To be or not to be";
  char str2[40];
  char str3[40];

  /* copy to sized buffer (overflow safe): */
  strncpy ( str2, str1, sizeof(str2) );

  /* partial copy (only 5 chars): */
  strncpy ( str3, str2, 5 );
  str3[5] = '\0';   /* null character manually added */

  puts (str1);
  puts (str2);
  puts (str3);

  return 0;
}


Output:

To be or not to be
To be or not to be
To be

See also

strcpy
Copy string (function )
memcpy
Copy block of memory (function )
memmove
Move block of memory (function )
memchr
Locate character in block of memory (function )
memcmp
Compare two blocks of memory (function )
memset
Fill block of memory (function )

C++