Re: strcpy versus strncpy

Classic UNIX -- i.e., 7th Edition and the like, before Berkeley --
had no limit on path length in the kernel. Assorted applications
often did have fixed-length buffers, of course, but not the kernel.
A path name was fetched one byte at a time, and analyzed one
component at a time. (For fun, I just went back and reviewed the
code in my ancient copy of the Lions commentary on the 6th Edition
kernel...)
Received on Mar 05 1998