STRCAT(3)

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 terminating 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 bytes from src; and

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

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

If src contains n or more bytes, strncat() writes n+1 bytes 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), string(3), strncpy(3), wcscat(3), wcsncat(3)

COLOPHON
This page is part of release 3.41 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/.