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Article #5

Re: strncpy bug?

#5
From: Tanmoy Bhattacharya
Date: Thu, 14 Mar 1996 15:25
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In article <ccurtis.826776589@ee.fit.edu>
ccurtis@ee.fit.edu (Christopher W. Curtis) writes:

<snip>
CWC: I was wondering if this is a Linux thing (kernel 1.2.1) or a
CWC: more general 'problem'.  If you call strncpy as such:
CWC: 	strncpy( dest, NULL, x );
CWC: it will seg fault.  Is this common among all platforms, or
CWC: just with Linux?
CWC: 
CWC: The man page says nothing about it, but I would have presumed
CWC: that if str[n]cpy were passed NULL as a source, it would
CWC: merely catenate the destination.  Did I presume wrong?

Yes. The standard library functions should usually always be passed
pointers which actually point to objects of appropriate types. A null
pointer points nowhere: and is therefore invalid in most of these
contexts. In this context, you may pass the constant string ""
instead. 

Some library functions specifically allow you to pass in null
pointers: that is obviously different.

Cheers
Tanmoy
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Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!newshost.lanl.gov!tanmoy
From: tanmoy@qcd.lanl.gov (Tanmoy Bhattacharya)
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.help,comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: strncpy bug?
Date: 14 Mar 1996 15:25:04 GMT
Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory
Message-ID: <TANMOY.96Mar14082504@qcd.lanl.gov>
References: <ccurtis.826776589@ee.fit.edu>
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In-reply-to: ccurtis@ee.fit.edu's message of Thu, 14 Mar 1996 04:09:49 GMT