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.

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( )