C in a Nutshell

Name

strncpy

Synopsis

Copies the first n characters of a string to another location

#include <string.h>
char *strncpy( char * restrict dest, const char * restrict src, size_t n );

The strncpy() function copies at most n characters from the string addressed by src to the char array addressed by dest, which must be large enough to accommodate n characters. The strncpy() function returns the value of its first argument, dest. The locations that strncpy() reads from and writes to using its restricted pointer parameters must not overlap.

Tip

If there is no terminating null character within the first n characters of src, then the copied string fragment is not terminated.

If strncpy() reads a null character from src before it has copied n characters, then the function writes null characters to dest until it has written a total of n characters.

Example

See the examples for strcspn() and strpbrk() in this chapter.

See Also

strcpy(), memcpy(), memmove(), wcsncpy(), wmemcpy(), wmemmove()