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PMSTRNCAT(3) Library Functions Manual PMSTRNCAT(3)
pmstrncat - safe string concatenation
#include <pcp/pmapi.h> int pmstrncat(char *dest, size_t destlen, char *src); cc ... -lpcp
pmstrncat is safe string concatenation routine with semantics sim‐ ilar to strncat(3). The main differences between pmstrncat and strncat(3) are: • src must be null-byte terminated for pmstrncat • destlen is the length of the destination buffer (dest) for pm‐ strncat, not the maximum number of non-null bytes to copy from src as it is for strncat • the length argument has the same semantics for pmstrncat and pmstrncpy(3), unlike strncat(3) and strncpy(3). • the return value from pmstrncat is useful • the order of the arguments for pmstrncat has been deliberately changed from the order of the arguments for strncat(3) to avoid accidental misuse that a compiler can easily detect On success, pmstrncat returns 0, else -1 indicates that src is too big and the result been truncated to ensure dest has no been over‐ run.
strncat(3) first appeared in Edition 7 AT&T Unix around 1979. It was specifically crafted to construct file pathnames (which needed to be null-byte terminated) from component names from on-disk di‐ rectory entries that were of a fixed maximum size and may have ze‐ ro, one or more trailing null-bytes The subsequent attempts to use strncat(3) for more generally string concatenation operations has been fraught with abuse and security issues; pmstrncat is an attempt to address these prob‐ lems.
PMAPI(3), pmstrncpy(3), strncat(3) and strncpy(3).
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Performance Co-Pilot PCP PMSTRNCAT(3)
Pages that refer to this page: pmstrncpy(3)