Issues with Incorrect String Manipulation When Using `strncpy` in C
I'm building a feature where I'm prototyping a solution and I'm not sure how to approach I've been banging my head against this for hours..... I'm encountering unexpected behavior when using `strncpy` to copy strings in my C program. The issue arises when the source string length is greater than the specified length for the destination buffer. Although I'm aware that `strncpy` does not null-terminate the destination string if the source string is longer than the specified length, I assumed that the remaining characters would be filled with null bytes. However, the behavior seems inconsistent, leading to garbage values being printed when I attempt to output the destination string after the copy. I've tried the following code, which is meant to copy a string with a defined maximum length: ```c #include <stdio.h> #include <string.h> int main() { char source[] = "Hello, this is a long string that exceeds the buffer size."; char dest[20]; strncpy(dest, source, sizeof(dest)); // Intending to null-terminate the string explicitly dest[sizeof(dest) - 1] = '\0'; printf("Destination string: '%s'\n", dest); return 0; } ``` When I compile and run this program, I expect the output to be a truncated version of the source string, but instead, I see: ``` Destination string: 'Hello, this is a long string that exceeds the buffer size.' ``` Even after trying to null-terminate the string explicitly, it still seems to carry over extra characters. I'm also compiling with `gcc` version 11.2.0 on a Linux system. What am I missing here? Is there a better way to handle this situation, or am I misunderstanding how `strncpy` should work? My development environment is Windows. What am I doing wrong? This is my first time working with C LTS. Cheers for any assistance! This is my first time working with C 3.11. Any ideas how to fix this? This is part of a larger desktop app I'm building. Am I approaching this the right way? I'm coming from a different tech stack and learning C.