strncpy

char * strncpy ( char * destination, const char * source, size_t num );

Copy characters from string

Copies the first num characters of source to destination. If the end of the source C string (which is signaled by a null-character) is found before num characters have been copied, destination is padded with zeros until a total of num characters have been written to it.
No null-character is implicitly appended to the end of destination, so destination will only be null-terminated if the length of the C string in source is less than num.

Parameters

destination

Pointer to the destination array where the content is to be copied.

source

C string to be copied.

num

Maximum number of characters to be copied from source.

Return Value

destination is returned.

Example

/* strncpy example */
#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>

int main ()
{
  char str1[]= "To be or not to be";
  char str2[6];
  strncpy (str2,str1,5);
  str2[5]='\0';
  puts (str2);
  return 0;
}

Output:

To be