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From: Keith Thompson <kst-u@mib.org>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: How to copy a string safely and efficiently in C?
Date: Thu, 15 Sep 2016 16:04:35 -0700
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Joe Pfeiffer <pfeiffer@cs.nmsu.edu> writes:
[...]
> The better question would be why something whose definition was so
> idiosyncratic and whose use was so specialized was ever in the standard
> library in the first place.

[referring to strncpy]

One possibility is that it's because early Unix systems used a
fixed-width character array to store file names in directory entries,
and strncpy() was useful for manipulating them.

It's not clear that that's the actual rationale, but it's plausible.

-- 
Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keith) kst-u@mib.org  <http://www.ghoti.net/~kst>
Working, but not speaking, for JetHead Development, Inc.
"We must do something.  This is something.  Therefore, we must do this."
    -- Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn, "Yes Minister"