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Advanced Programming Techniques in C

Copying String

Explore how to copy strings in C with the standard strcpy function and develop your own version, xstrcpy. Understand the step-by-step mechanism of copying each character, incrementing pointers, and terminating strings correctly. This lesson helps you master string copying by dissecting different implementations for efficiency and clarity.

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The strcpy() function

strcpy( ) copies the source string, str1, into the target string, str2. The basic syntax of the strcpy() function is given below:

char* strcpy(const char *str2, const char *str1);

strcpy( ) takes two strings in its input and, then, copies one string into the other, character by character. The order of passing base addresses to strcpy( ) must always be the target, followed by the source. Here, *str2 points to the target string, and *str1 points to the source string.

See the code given below!

C
# include <stdio.h>
# include <string.h>
int main( ) 
{
  // Initializing string
    char str1[] = "Nagpur" ; 
	char str2[ 10 ] ; 
	printf("Before copying\n");
    printf("Source string: %s \n", str1);
    printf("Target string: %s \n\n", str2);
    // Copying strings
	strcpy ( str2, str1 ) ;
	printf("After copying\n");
    printf("Source string: %s \n", str1);
    printf("Target string: %s \n\n", str2); 
}

The xstrcpy() function

Instead of ...