Name

strcat, strncat — concatenate two strings

Synopsis

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

DESCRIPTION

The strcat() function appends the src string to the dest string, overwriting the null byte ('\0') at the end of dest, and then adds a terminating null byte. The strings may not overlap, and the dest string must have enough space for the result.

The strncat() function is similar, except that

  • it will use at most n characters from src; and

  • src does not need to be null-terminated if it contains n or more characters.

As with strcat(), the resulting string in dest is always null-terminated.

If src contains n or more characters, strncat() writes n+1 characters to dest (n from src plus the terminating null byte). Therefore, the size of dest must be at least strlen(dest)+n+1.

A simple implementation of strncat() might be:

char*
strncat(char *dest, const char *src, size_t n)
{
    size_t dest_len = strlen(dest);
    size_t i;

    for (i = 0 ; i < n && src[i] != '\0' ; i++)
        dest[dest_len + i] = src[i];
    dest[dest_len + i] = '\0';

    return dest;
}

RETURN VALUE

The strcat() and strncat() functions return a pointer to the resulting string dest.

CONFORMING TO

SVr4, 4.3BSD, C89, C99.

SEE ALSO

bcopy(3), memccpy(3), memcpy(3), strcpy(3), strncpy(3), wcscat(3), wcsncat(3)

COLOPHON

This page is part of release 3.24 of the Linux man-pages project. A description of the project, and information about reporting bugs, can be found at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.


  Copyright 1993 David Metcalfe (davidprism.demon.co.uk)

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Formatted or processed versions of this manual, if unaccompanied by
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References consulted:
    Linux libc source code
    Lewine's _POSIX Programmer's Guide_ (O'Reilly & Associates, 1991)
    386BSD man pages
Modified Sat Jul 24 18:11:47 1993 by Rik Faith (faithcs.unc.edu)
2007-06-15, Marc Boyer <marc.boyerenseeiht.fr> + mtk
    Improve discussion of strncat().