From: "Michael Kerrisk (man-pages)" <mtk.manpages@gmail.com>
To: Jonny Grant <jg@jguk.org>
Cc: linux-man <linux-man@vger.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: strcpy compared to POSIX strcpy
Date: Mon, 29 Jun 2020 22:30:48 +0200 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <CAKgNAkgH4L-_A0LqqYyk621EmRqDOqAbG80gR-bu4Fk6jcEskA@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <0608691a-6400-0a44-1031-a693f57dee52@jguk.org>
Hi Jonny
On Mon, 29 Jun 2020 at 15:41, Jonny Grant <jg@jguk.org> wrote:
>
> Hi Michael,
>
> Returning to an old topic, noticed strcpy man page is different from the POSIX spec with regards to "terminating NUL character" or "null-terminated" shouldn't man pages should follow POSIX style writing "NUL"?
>
> https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man3/strcpy.3.html
>
> https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man3/strcpy.3p.html
>
> https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/functions/strcpy.html
>
> Another function even has nul in the name
> https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man3/strchrnul.3.html
It's not so simple. In POSIX/SUS, you will find variously:
terminating NUL character
terminating NUL
terminating null character
terminating null byte
There's even one instance of "terminating NULL character" (in
<net/if.h>; I estimate it's a bug).
In the C standard (C11), "terminating null character" seems to be used
exclusively, but as I understand the C standard [char == byte] by
definition.
I've tried to consistently use "terminating null byte" across all
pages in man-pages. See also the discussion in man-pages(7).
Cheers,
Michael
--
Michael Kerrisk
Linux man-pages maintainer; http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/
Linux/UNIX System Programming Training: http://man7.org/training/
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2020-06-29 20:31 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 3+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2020-06-29 13:41 strcpy compared to POSIX strcpy Jonny Grant
2020-06-29 20:30 ` Michael Kerrisk (man-pages) [this message]
2020-06-30 10:59 ` Jonny Grant
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