Hi all,

I am having a peculiar problem with strcpy.

Here is what i do,

char *buffer;
char *result=NULL;

buffer = malloc (sizeof(char) * MAX_RESPONSE_LENGTH);
result = malloc (sizeof(char) * 3);

bzero(buffer, sizeof(char) * MAX_RESPONSE_LENGTH);
bzero(result, sizeof(char) * 3);

do {
ctr++;

bytes_read = read(sockfd, buffer+i, 1);
if (bytes_read > 0) {
if ((buffer[i] == '\n') && (multiline == 0)) {
strncpy(result, buffer, 3);
returnval = atoi(result);
}


As I am reading strings like
550 File not readable.
200 Command status OK.

the Buffer has contents like buffer = "550 File not readable.\r\n"

but strncpy returns result with contents "5508" and then returnval =5508.

Also,
When , 200 is received,
result contains "200("
but returnval = 200, which is actually wanted.

I want to know why the strncpy is copying 4 bits instead of 3.
Also, when I do it for 2, it copies 2 only which is the way it is supposed to work.
*The values of various buffers was read through gdb.

Kindly help.

Regards,
Rajat Garg
SU

maybe try looking into strtok instead of strncpy. that's normally what i use to parse words from a string.

http://www.cplusplus.com/ref/cstring/strtok.html

Thanks,
but there are multiple constraints that dont allow use of strtok here. Delimiter may change here and it would be very diffcult to operate in multiline response.

Any reason why strncpy not working properly

*edit: hit the wrong friggin button. - double post*

didn't see that in your code. it looks like you want result to be an array of 3 characters and for it to have the 3 digit error code. in which case strtok would work great for you. but anyway... manually add a null terminator to result after strncpy before running it through atoi.

from man strncpy:

also, if you want to get 3 characters, your result pointer needs to allocate a character array of 4 (1 greater) so the last character will be the null terminator.