NAME | LIBRARY | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | RETURN VALUE | ATTRIBUTES | STANDARDS | HISTORY | CAVEATS | BUGS | EXAMPLES | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON |
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strncat(3) Library Functions Manual strncat(3)
strncat - append non-null bytes from a source array to a string, and null-terminate the result
Standard C library (libc, -lc)
#include <string.h> char *strncat(char *restrict dst, const char src[restrict .ssize], size_t ssize);
This function appends at most ssize non-null bytes from the array pointed to by src, followed by a null character, to the end of the string pointed to by dst. dst must point to a string contained in a buffer that is large enough, that is, the buffer size must be at least strlen(dst) + strnlen(src, ssize) + 1. An implementation of this function might be: char * strncat(char *restrict dst, const char *restrict src, size_t ssize) { #define strnul(s) (s + strlen(s)) stpcpy(mempcpy(strnul(dst), src, strnlen(src, ssize)), ""); return dst; }
strncat() returns dst.
For an explanation of the terms used in this section, see attributes(7). ┌─────────────────────────────────────┬───────────────┬─────────┐ │ Interface │ Attribute │ Value │ ├─────────────────────────────────────┼───────────────┼─────────┤ │ strncat() │ Thread safety │ MT-Safe │ └─────────────────────────────────────┴───────────────┴─────────┘
C11, POSIX.1-2008.
POSIX.1-2001, C89, SVr4, 4.3BSD.
The name of this function is confusing; it has no relation to strncpy(3). If the destination buffer does not already contain a string, or is not large enough, the behavior is undefined. See _FORTIFY_SOURCE in feature_test_macros(7).
This function can be very inefficient. Read about Shlemiel the painter ⟨https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/12/11/back-to-basics/⟩.
#include <err.h> #include <stdio.h> #include <stdlib.h> #include <string.h> #define nitems(arr) (sizeof((arr)) / sizeof((arr)[0])) int main(void) { size_t n; // Null-padded fixed-size character sequences char pre[4] = "pre."; char new_post[50] = ".foo.bar"; // Strings char post[] = ".post"; char src[] = "some_long_body.post"; char *dest; n = nitems(pre) + strlen(src) - strlen(post) + nitems(new_post) + 1; dest = malloc(sizeof(*dest) * n); if (dest == NULL) err(EXIT_FAILURE, "malloc()"); dest[0] = '\0'; // There's no 'cpy' function to this 'cat'. strncat(dest, pre, nitems(pre)); strncat(dest, src, strlen(src) - strlen(post)); strncat(dest, new_post, nitems(new_post)); puts(dest); // "pre.some_long_body.foo.bar" free(dest); exit(EXIT_SUCCESS); }
string(3), string_copying(7)
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Linux man-pages 6.9.1 2024-06-15 strncat(3)
Pages that refer to this page: pmstrncat(3), string(3), wcsncat(3), feature_test_macros(7), signal-safety(7), string_copying(7)