NAME
strlcpy
, strlcat
— size-bounded string copying
and concatenation
SYNOPSIS
#include
<string.h>
size_t
strlcpy
(char
*dst, const char
*src, size_t
dstsize);
size_t
strlcat
(char
*dst, const char
*src, size_t
dstsize);
DESCRIPTION
The
strlcpy
()
and strlcat
() functions copy and concatenate strings
with the same input parameters and output result as
snprintf(3). They are
designed to be safer, more consistent, and less error prone replacements for
the easily misused functions strncpy(3) and strncat(3).
strlcpy
()
and strlcat
() take the full size of the destination
buffer and guarantee NUL-termination if there is room. Note that room for
the NUL should be included in dstsize.
strlcpy
()
copies up to dstsize - 1 characters from the string
src to dst, NUL-terminating the
result if dstsize is not 0.
strlcat
()
appends string src to the end of
dst. It will append at most
dstsize - strlen(dst) - 1 characters. It will then
NUL-terminate, unless dstsize is 0 or the original
dst string was longer than
dstsize (in practice this should not happen as it
means that either dstsize is incorrect or that
dst is not a proper string).
If the src and dst strings overlap, the behavior is undefined.
RETURN VALUES
Besides quibbles over the return type (size_t versus int) and signal handler safety (snprintf(3) is not entirely safe on some systems), the following two are equivalent:
n = strlcpy(dst, src, len); n = snprintf(dst, len, "%s", src);
Like snprintf(3), the strlcpy
() and
strlcat
() functions return the total length of the
string they tried to create. For strlcpy
() that
means the length of src. For
strlcat
() that means the initial length of
dst plus the length of src.
If the return value is >=
dstsize, the output string has been truncated. It is
the caller's responsibility to handle this.
EXAMPLES
The following code fragment illustrates the simple case:
char *s, *p, buf[BUFSIZ]; ... (void)strlcpy(buf, s, sizeof(buf)); (void)strlcat(buf, p, sizeof(buf));
To detect truncation, perhaps while building a pathname, something like the following might be used:
char *dir, *file, pname[PATH_MAX]; ... if (strlcpy(pname, dir, sizeof(pname)) >= sizeof(pname)) goto toolong; if (strlcat(pname, file, sizeof(pname)) >= sizeof(pname)) goto toolong;
Since it is known how many characters were copied the first time, things can be sped up a bit by using a copy instead of an append:
char *dir, *file, pname[PATH_MAX]; size_t n; ... n = strlcpy(pname, dir, sizeof(pname)); if (n >= sizeof(pname)) goto toolong; if (strlcpy(pname + n, file, sizeof(pname) - n) >= sizeof(pname) - n) goto toolong;
However, one may question the validity of such optimizations, as
they defeat the whole purpose of strlcpy
() and
strlcat
(). As a matter of fact, the first version of
this manual page got it wrong.
SEE ALSO
HISTORY
strlcpy
() and
strlcat
() first appeared in OpenBSD
2.4.
AUTHORS
strlcpy
() and
strlcat
() were created by Todd C.
Miller
<millert@openbsd.org>.