In C I have a path in one of my strings
/home/frankv/
I now want to add the name of files that are contained in this folder - e.g. file1.txt file123.txt etc.
Having declared my variable either like this
char pathToFile[strlen("/home/frankv/")+1]
or
char *pathToFile = malloc(strlen("/home/frankv/")+1)
My problem is that I cannot simply add more characters because it would cause a buffer overflow. Also, what do I do in case I do not know how long the filenames will be?
I've really gotten used to PHP lazy $string1.$string2 .. What is the easiest way to do this in C?
If you've allocated a buffer with malloc(), you can use realloc() to expand it:
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>
int main(void) {
char *buf;
const char s1[] = "hello";
const char s2[] = ", world";
buf = malloc(sizeof s1);
strcpy(buf, s1);
buf = realloc(buf, sizeof s1 + sizeof s2 - 1);
strcat(buf, s2);
puts(buf);
return 0;
}
NOTE: I have omitted error checking. You shouldn't. Always check whether malloc() returns a null pointer; if it does, take some corrective action, even if it's just terminating the program. Likewise for realloc(). And if you want to be able to recover from a realloc() failure, store the result in a temporary so you don't clobber your original pointer.
Use std::string, if possible. Else, reallocate another block of memory and use strcpy and strcat.
You have a couple options, but, if you want to do this dynamically using no additional libraries, realloc() is the stdlib function you're looking for:
char *pathToFile = malloc(strlen("/home/frankv/")+1);
char *string_to_add = "filename.txt";
char *p = realloc(pathToFile, strlen(pathToFile) + strlen(string_to_add) + 1);
if (!p) abort();
pathToFile = p;
strcat(p, string_to_add);
Note: you should always assign the result of realloc to a new pointer first, as realloc() returns NULL on failure. If you assign to the original pointer, you are begging for a memory leak.
If you're going to be doing much string manipulation, though, you may want to consider using a string library. Two I've found useful are bstring and ustr.
In case you can use C++, use the std::string. In case you must to use pure C, use what's call doubling - i.e. when out of space in the string - double the memory and copy the string into the new memory. And you'll have to use the second syntax:
char *pathToFile = malloc(strlen("/home/frankv/")+1);
You have chosen the wrong language for manipulating strings!
The easy and conventional way out is to do something like:
#define MAX_PATH 260
char pathToFile[MAX_PATH+1] = "/home/frankv/";
strcat(pathToFile, "wibble/");
Of course, this is error prone - if the resulting string exceeds MAX_PATH characters, anything can happen, and it is this sort of programming which is the route many trojans and worms use to penetrate security (by corrupting memory in a carefully defined way). Hence my deliberate choice of 260 for MAX_PATH, which is what it used to be in Windows - you can still make Windows Explorer do strange things to your files with paths over 260 characters, possibly because of code like this!
strncat may be a small help - you can at least tell it the maximum size of the destination, and it won't copy beyond that.
To do it robustly you need a string library which does variable length strings correctly. But I don't know if there is such a thing for C (C++ is a different matter, of course).
Is there a possibility that strcat can ever fail?
If we pass some incorrect buffer or string, then it might lead to memory corruption. But, apart from that is it possible that this function can return failure like strcat returning NULL even if destination string passed is Non-NULL? If no, why strcat has a return type specified at all?
I have just mentioned strcat as an example. But, this question applies to many string and memory related (like memcpy etc) functions. I just want to know the reasoning behind some of these seemingly "always successful" functions having return types.
Returning a pointer to the target string makes it easy to use the output in this sort of (perhaps not-so-clever) way:
int len = strlen(strcat(firstString, secondString));
Most of them go back to a time when C didn't include 'void', so there was no way to specify that it had no return value. As a result, they specified them to return something, even if it was pretty useless.
The implicit contract of these functions is the following: if you pass-in pointers to valid strings, then the functions will perform as advertised. Pass-in a NULL pointer, and the function may do anything (usually, it will raise a SIGSEGV). Given that the arguments are valid (i.e., point to strings) then the algorithms used can not fail.
I always ignored the return types (wondering who uses them) until today I saw this in glibc-2.11 (copied exactly from the source file) and everything became much more clear:
wchar_t *
wcsdup (s)
const wchar_t *s;
{
size_t len = (__wcslen (s) + 1) * sizeof (wchar_t);
void *new = malloc (len);
if (new == NULL)
return NULL;
return (wchar_t *) memcpy (new, (void *) s, len);
}
It makes it easier to write less code ("chain" it?) I guess.
Here's a pretty standard implementation of strcat from OpenBSD:
char *
strcat(char *s, const char *append)
{
char *save = s;
for (; *s; ++s);
while ((*s++ = *append++) != '\0');
return(save);
}
As long as the inputs passed to it are valid (i.e. append is properly terminated and s is large enough to concatenate it), this can't really fail - it's a simple memory manipulation. That memory is entirely under the control of the caller.
The return value here could be used to chain concatenations, for example:
strcat(strcat(s, t1), t2);
Although this is hardly efficient...
Some people seem to think that C's strcpy() function is bad or evil. While I admit that it's usually better to use strncpy() in order to avoid buffer overflows, the following (an implementation of the strdup() function for those not lucky enough to have it) safely uses strcpy() and should never overflow:
char *strdup(const char *s1)
{
char *s2 = malloc(strlen(s1)+1);
if(s2 == NULL)
{
return NULL;
}
strcpy(s2, s1);
return s2;
}
*s2 is guaranteed to have enough space to store *s1, and using strcpy() saves us from having to store the strlen() result in another function to use later as the unnecessary (in this case) length parameter to strncpy(). Yet some people write this function with strncpy(), or even memcpy(), which both require a length parameter. I would like to know what people think about this. If you think strcpy() is safe in certain situations, say so. If you have a good reason not to use strcpy() in this situation, please give it - I'd like to know why it might be better to use strncpy() or memcpy() in situations like this. If you think strcpy() is okay, but not here, please explain.
Basically, I just want to know why some people use memcpy() when others use strcpy() and still others use plain strncpy(). Is there any logic to preferring one over the three (disregarding the buffer checks of the first two)?
memcpy can be faster than strcpy and strncpy because it does not have to compare each copied byte with '\0', and because it already knows the length of the copied object. It can be implemented in a similar way with the Duff's device, or use assembler instructions that copy several bytes at a time, like movsw and movsd
I'm following the rules in here. Let me quote from it
strncpy was initially introduced into the C library to deal with fixed-length name fields in structures such as directory entries. Such fields are not used in the same way as strings: the trailing null is unnecessary for a maximum-length field, and setting trailing bytes for shorter names to null assures efficient field-wise comparisons. strncpy is not by origin a ``bounded strcpy,'' and the Committee has preferred to recognize existing practice rather than alter the function to better suit it to such use.
For that reason, you will not get a trailing '\0' in a string if you hit the n not finding a '\0' from the source string so far. It's easy to misuse it (of course, if you know about that pitfall, you can avoid it). As the quote says, it wasn't designed as a bounded strcpy. And i would prefer not to use it if not necessary. In your case, clearly its use is not necessary and you proved it. Why then use it?
And generally speaking, programming code is also about reducing redundancy. If you know you have a string containing 'n' characters, why tell the copying function to copy maximal n characters? You do redundant checking. It's little about performance, but much more about consistent code. Readers will ask themselves what strcpy could do that could cross the n characters and which makes it necessary to limit the copying, just to read in manuals that this cannot happen in that case. And there the confusion start happen among readers of the code.
For the rational to use mem-, str- or strn-, i chose among them like in the above linked document:
mem- when i want to copy raw bytes, like bytes of a structure.
str- when copying a null terminated string - only when 100% no overflow could happen.
strn- when copying a null terminated string up to some length, filling the remaining bytes with zero. Probably not what i want in most cases. It's easy to forget the fact with the trailing zero-fill, but it's by design as the above quote explains. So, i would just code my own small loop that copies characters, adding a trailing '\0':
char * sstrcpy(char *dst, char const *src, size_t n) {
char *ret = dst;
while(n-- > 0) {
if((*dst++ = *src++) == '\0')
return ret;
}
*dst++ = '\0';
return ret;
}
Just a few lines that do exactly what i want. If i wanted "raw speed" i can still look out for a portable and optimized implementation that does exactly this bounded strcpy job. As always, profile first and then mess with it.
Later, C got functions for working with wide characters, called wcs- and wcsn- (for C99). I would use them likewise.
The reason why people use strncpy not strcpy is because strings are not always null terminated and it's very easy to overflow the buffer (the space you have allocated for the string with strcpy) and overwrite some unrelated bit of memory.
With strcpy this can happen, with strncpy this will never happen. That is why strcpy is considered unsafe. Evil might be a little strong.
Frankly, if you are doing much string handling in C, you should not ask yourself whether you should use strcpy or strncpy or memcpy. You should find or write a string library that provides a higher level abstraction. For example, one that keeps track of the length of each string, allocates memory for you, and provides all the string operations you need.
This will almost certainly guarantee you make very few of the kinds of mistakes usually associated with C string handling, such as buffer overflows, forgetting to terminate a string with a NUL byte, and so on.
The library might have functions such as these:
typedef struct MyString MyString;
MyString *mystring_new(const char *c_str);
MyString *mystring_new_from_buffer(const void *p, size_t len);
void mystring_free(MyString *s);
size_t mystring_len(MyString *s);
int mystring_char_at(MyString *s, size_t offset);
MyString *mystring_cat(MyString *s1, ...); /* NULL terminated list */
MyString *mystring_copy_substring(MyString *s, size_t start, size_t max_chars);
MyString *mystring_find(MyString *s, MyString *pattern);
size_t mystring_find_char(MyString *s, int c);
void mystring_copy_out(void *output, MyString *s, size_t max_chars);
int mystring_write_to_fd(int fd, MyString *s);
int mystring_write_to_file(FILE *f, MyString *s);
I wrote one for the Kannel project, see the gwlib/octstr.h file. It made life much simpler for us. On the other hand, such a library is fairly simple to write, so you might write one for yourself, even if only as an exercise.
No one has mentioned strlcpy, developed by Todd C. Miller and Theo de Raadt. As they say in their paper:
The most common misconception is that
strncpy() NUL-terminates the
destination string. This is only true,
however, if length of the source
string is less than the size
parameter. This can be problematic
when copying user input that may be of
arbitrary length into a fixed size
buffer. The safest way to use
strncpy() in this situation is to pass
it one less than the size of the
destination string, and then terminate
the string by hand. That way you are
guaranteed to always have a
NUL-terminated destination string.
There are counter-arguments for the use of strlcpy; the Wikipedia page makes note that
Drepper argues that strlcpy and
strlcat make truncation errors easier
for a programmer to ignore and thus
can introduce more bugs than they
remove.*
However, I believe that this just forces people that know what they're doing to add a manual NULL termination, in addition to a manual adjustment to the argument to strncpy. Use of strlcpy makes it much easier to avoid buffer overruns because you failed to NULL terminate your buffer.
Also note that the lack of strlcpy in glibc or Microsoft's libraries should not be a barrier to use; you can find the source for strlcpy and friends in any BSD distribution, and the license is likely friendly to your commercial/non-commercial project. See the comment at the top of strlcpy.c.
I personally am of the mindset that if the code can be proven to be valid—and done so quickly—it is perfectly acceptable. That is, if the code is simple and thus obviously correct, then it is fine.
However, your assumption seems to be that while your function is executing, no other thread will modify the string pointed to by s1. What happens if this function is interrupted after successful memory allocation (and thus the call to strlen), the string grows, and bam you have a buffer overflow condition since strcpy copies to the NULL byte.
The following might be better:
char *
strdup(const char *s1) {
int s1_len = strlen(s1);
char *s2 = malloc(s1_len+1);
if(s2 == NULL) {
return NULL;
}
strncpy(s2, s1, s1_len);
return s2;
}
Now, the string can grow through no fault of your own and you're safe. The result will not be a dup, but it won't be any crazy overflows, either.
The probability of the code you provided actually being a bug is pretty low (pretty close to non-existent, if not non-existent, if you are working in an environment that has no support for threading whatsoever). It's just something to think about.
ETA: Here is a slightly better implementation:
char *
strdup(const char *s1, int *retnum) {
int s1_len = strlen(s1);
char *s2 = malloc(s1_len+1);
if(s2 == NULL) {
return NULL;
}
strncpy(s2, s1, s1_len);
retnum = s1_len;
return s2;
}
There the number of characters is being returned. You can also:
char *
strdup(const char *s1) {
int s1_len = strlen(s1);
char *s2 = malloc(s1_len+1);
if(s2 == NULL) {
return NULL;
}
strncpy(s2, s1, s1_len);
s2[s1_len+1] = '\0';
return s2;
}
Which will terminate it with a NUL byte. Either way is better than the one that I quickly put together originally.
I agree. I would recommend against strncpy() though, since it will always pad your output to the indicated length. This is some historical decision, which I think was really unfortunate as it seriously worsens the performance.
Consider code like this:
char buf[128];
strncpy(buf, "foo", sizeof buf);
This will not write the expected four characters to buf, but will instead write "foo" followed by 125 zero characters. If you're for instance collecting a lot of short strings, this will mean your actual performance is far worse than expected.
If available, I prefer to use snprintf(), writing the above like:
snprintf(buf, sizeof buf, "foo");
If instead copying a non-constant string, it's done like this:
snprintf(buf, sizeof buf, "%s", input);
This is important, since if input contains % characters snprintf() would interpret them, opening up whole shelvefuls of cans of worms.
I think strncpy is evil too.
To truly protect yourself from programming errors of this kind, you need to make it impossible to write code that (a) looks OK, and (b) overruns a buffer.
This means you need a real string abstraction, which stores the buffer and capacity opaquely, binds them together, forever, and checks bounds. Otherwise, you end up passing strings and their capacities all over the shop. Once you get to real string ops, like modifying the middle of a string, it's almost as easy to pass the wrong length into strncpy (and especially strncat), as it is to call strcpy with a too-small destination.
Of course you might still ask whether to use strncpy or strcpy in implementing that abstraction: strncpy is safer there provided you fully grok what it does. But in string-handling application code, relying on strncpy to prevent buffer overflows is like wearing half a condom.
So, your strdup-replacement might look something like this (order of definitions changed to keep you in suspense):
string *string_dup(const string *s1) {
string *s2 = string_alloc(string_len(s1));
if (s2 != NULL) {
string_set(s2,s1);
}
return s2;
}
static inline size_t string_len(const string *s) {
return strlen(s->data);
}
static inline void string_set(string *dest, const string *src) {
// potential (but unlikely) performance issue: strncpy 0-fills dest,
// even if the src is very short. We may wish to optimise
// by switching to memcpy later. But strncpy is better here than
// strcpy, because it means we can use string_set even when
// the length of src is unknown.
strncpy(dest->data, src->data, dest->capacity);
}
string *string_alloc(size_t maxlen) {
if (maxlen > SIZE_MAX - sizeof(string) - 1) return NULL;
string *self = malloc(sizeof(string) + maxlen + 1);
if (self != NULL) {
// empty string
self->data[0] = '\0';
// strncpy doesn't NUL-terminate if it prevents overflow,
// so exclude the NUL-terminator from the capacity, set it now,
// and it can never be overwritten.
self->capacity = maxlen;
self->data[maxlen] = '\0';
}
return self;
}
typedef struct string {
size_t capacity;
char data[0];
} string;
The problem with these string abstractions is that nobody can ever agree on one (for instance whether strncpy's idiosyncrasies mentioned in comments above are good or bad, whether you need immutable and/or copy-on-write strings that share buffers when you create a substring, etc). So although in theory you should just take one off the shelf, you can end up with one per project.
I'd tend to use memcpy if I have already calculated the length, although strcpy is usually optimised to work on machine words, it feels that you should provide the library with as much information as you can, so it can use the most optimal copying mechanism.
But for the example you give, it doesn't matter - if it's going to fail, it will be in the initial strlen, so strncpy doesn't buy you anything in terms of safety (and presumbly strncpy is slower as it has to both check bounds and for nul), and any difference between memcpy and strcpy isn't worth changing code for speculatively.
The evil comes when people use it like this (although the below is super simplified):
void BadFunction(char *input)
{
char buffer[1024]; //surely this will **always** be enough
strcpy(buffer, input);
...
}
Which is a situation that happens suprising often.
But yeah, strcpy is as good as strncpy in any situation where you are allocating memory for the destination buffer and have already used strlen to find the length.
strlen finds upto last null terminating place.
But in reality buffers are not null terminated.
that's why people use different functions.
Well, strcpy() is not as evil as strdup() - at least strcpy() is part of Standard C.
In the situation you describe, strcpy is a good choice. This strdup will only get into trouble if the s1 was not ended with a '\0'.
I would add a comment indicating why there are no problems with strcpy, to prevent others (and yourself one year from now) wondering about its correctness for too long.
strncpy often seems safe, but may get you into trouble. If the source "string" is shorter than count, it pads the target with '\0' until it reaches count. That may be bad for performance. If the source string is longer than count, strncpy does not append a '\0' to the target. That is bound to get you into trouble later on when you expect a '\0' terminated "string". So strncpy should also be used with caution!
I would only use memcpy if I was not working with '\0' terminated strings, but that seems to be a matter of taste.
char *strdup(const char *s1)
{
char *s2 = malloc(strlen(s1)+1);
if(s2 == NULL)
{
return NULL;
}
strcpy(s2, s1);
return s2;
}
Problems:
s1 is unterminated, strlen causes the access of unallocated memory, program crashes.
s1 is unterminated, strlen while not causing the access of unallocated memory access memory from another part of your application. It's returned to the user (security issue) or parsed by another part of your program (heisenbug appears).
s1 is unterminated, strlen results in a malloc which the system can't satisfy, returns NULL. strcpy is passed NULL, program crashes.
s1 is unterminated, strlen results in a malloc which is very large, system allocs far too much memory to perform the task at hand, becomes unstable.
In the best case the code is inefficient, strlen requires access to every element in the string.
There are probably other problems... Look, null termination isn't always a bad idea. There are situations where, for computational efficiency, or to reduce storage requirements it makes sense.
For writing general purpose code, e.g. business logic does it make sense? No.
char* dupstr(char* str)
{
int full_len; // includes null terminator
char* ret;
char* s = str;
#ifdef _DEBUG
if (! str)
toss("arg 1 null", __WHENCE__);
#endif
full_len = strlen(s) + 1;
if (! (ret = (char*) malloc(full_len)))
toss("out of memory", __WHENCE__);
memcpy(ret, s, full_len); // already know len, so strcpy() would be slower
return ret;
}
This answer uses size_t and memcpy() for a fast and simple strdup().
Best to use type size_t as that is the type returned from strlen() and used by malloc() and memcpy(). int is not the proper type for these operations.
memcpy() is rarely slower than strcpy() or strncpy() and often significantly faster.
// Assumption: `s1` points to a C string.
char *strdup(const char *s1) {
size_t size = strlen(s1) + 1;
char *s2 = malloc(size);
if(s2 != NULL) {
memcpy(s2, s1, size);
}
return s2;
}
§7.1.1 1 "A string is a contiguous sequence of characters terminated by and including the first null character. ..."
Your code is terribly inefficient because it runs through the string twice to copy it.
Once in strlen().
Then again in strcpy().
And you don't check s1 for NULL.
Storing the length in some additional variable costs you about nothing, while running through each and every string twice to copy it is a cardinal sin.
I have a old program in which some library function is used and i dont have that library.
So I am writing that program using libraries of c++.
In that old code some function is there which is called like this
*string = newstrdup("Some string goes here");
the string variable is declared as char **string;
What he may be doing in that function named "newstrdup" ?
I tried many things but i dont know what he is doing ... Can anyone help
The function is used to make a copy of c-strings. That's often needed to get a writable version of a string literal. They (string literals) are itself not writable, so such a function copies them into an allocated writable buffer. You can then pass them to functions that modify their argument given, like strtok which writes into the string it has to tokenize.
I think you can come up with something like this, since it is called newstrdup:
char * newstrdup(char const* str) {
char *c = new char[std::strlen(str) + 1];
std::strcpy(c, str);
return c;
}
You would be supposed to free it once done using the string using
delete[] *string;
An alternative way of writing it is using malloc. If the library is old, it may have used that, which C++ inherited from C:
char * newstrdup(char const* str) {
char *c = (char*) malloc(std::strlen(str) + 1);
if(c != NULL) {
std::strcpy(c, str);
}
return c;
}
Now, you are supposed to free the string using free when done:
free(*string);
Prefer the first version if you are writing with C++. But if the existing code uses free to deallocate the memory again, use the second version. Beware that the second version returns NULL if no memory is available for dup'ing the string, while the first throws an exception in that case. Another note should be taken about behavior when you pass a NULL argument to your newstrdup. Depending on your library that may be allowed or may be not allowed. So insert appropriate checks into the above functions if necessary. There is a function called strdup available in POSIX systems, but that one allows neither NULL arguments nor does it use the C++ operator new to allocate memory.
Anyway, i've looked with google codesearch for newstrdup functions and found quite a few. Maybe your library is among the results:
Google CodeSearch, newstrdup
there has to be a reason that they wrote a "new" version of strdup. So there must be a corner case that it handles differently. like perhaps a null string returns an empty string.
litb's answer is a replacement for strdup, but I would think there is a reason they did what they did.
If you want to use strdup directly, use a define to rename it, rather than write new code.
The line *string = newstrdup("Some string goes here"); is not showing any weirdness to newstrdup. If string has type char ** then newstrdup is just returning char * as expected. Presumably string was already set to point to a variable of type char * in which the result is to be placed. Otherwise the code is writing through an uninitialized pointer..
newstrdup is probably making a new string that is a duplicate of the passed string; it returns a pointer to the string (which is itself a pointier to the characters).
It looks like he's written a strdup() function to operate on an existing pointer, probably to re-allocate it to a new size and then fill its contents. Likely, he's doing this to re-use the same pointer in a loop where *string is going to change frequently while preventing a leak on every subsequent call to strdup().
I'd probably implement that like string = redup(&string, "new contents") .. but that's just me.
Edit:
Here's a snip of my 'redup' function which might be doing something similar to what you posted, just in a different way:
int redup(char **s1, const char *s2)
{
size_t len, size;
if (s2 == NULL)
return -1;
len = strlen(s2);
size = len + 1;
*s1 = realloc(*s1, size);
if (*s1 == NULL)
return -1;
memset(*s1, 0, size);
memcpy(*s1, s2, len);
return len;
}
Of course, I should probably save a copy of *s1 and restore it if realloc() fails, but I didn't need to get that paranoid.
I think you need to look at what is happening with the "string" variable within the code as the prototype for the newstrdup() function would appear to be identical to the library strdup() version.
Are there any free(*string) calls in the code?
It would appear to be a strange thing do to, unless it's internally keeping a copy of the duplicated string and returning a pointer back to the same string again.
Again, I would ask why?
I have a function that accepts a char* as one of its parameters. I need to manipulate it, but leave the original char* intact. Essentially, I want to create a working copy of this char*. It seems like this should be easy, but I am really struggling.
My first (naive) attempt was to create another char* and set it equal to the original:
char* linkCopy = link;
This doesn't work, of course, because all I did was cause them to point to the same place.
Should I use strncpy to accomplish this?
I have tried the following, but it causes a crash:
char linkCopy[sizeof(link)] = strncpy(linkCopy, link, sizeof(link));
Am I missing something obvious...?
EDIT: My apologies, I was trying to simplify the examples, but I left some of the longer variable names in the second example. Fixed.
The sizeof will give you the size of the pointer. Which is often 4 or 8 depending on your processor/compiler, but not the size of the string pointed to. You can use strlen and strcpy:
// +1 because of '\0' at the end
char * copy = malloc(strlen(original) + 1);
strcpy(copy, original);
...
free(copy); // at the end, free it again.
I've seen some answers propose use of strdup, but that's a posix function, and not part of C.
You might want to take a look at the strdup (man strdup) function:
char *linkCopy = strdup(link);
/* Do some work here */
free(linkCopy);
Edit: And since you need it to be standard C, do as others have pointed out:
char *linkCopy = malloc(strlen(link) + 1);
/* Note that strncpy is unnecessary here since you know both the size
* of the source and destination buffers
*/
strcpy(linkCopy, link);
/* Do some work */
free(linkCopy);
Since strdup() is not in ANSI/ISO standard C, if it's not available in your compiler's runtime, go ahead and use this:
/*
** Portable, public domain strdup() originally by Bob Stout
*/
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>
char* strdup(const char* str)
{
char* newstr = (char*) malloc( strlen( str) + 1);
if (newstr) {
strcpy( newstr, str);
}
return newstr;
}
Use strdup, or strndup if you know the size (more secure).
Like:
char* new_char = strdup(original);
... manipulate it ...
free(new_char)
ps.: Not a C standard
Some answers, including the accepted one are a bit off. You do not strcpy a string you have just strlen'd. strcpy should not be used at all in modern programs.
The correct thing to do is a memcpy.
EDIT: memcpy is very likely to be faster in any architecture, strcpy can only possibly perform better for very short strings and should be avoided for security reasons even if they are not relevant in this case.
You are on the right track, you need to use strcpy/strncpy to make copies of strings. Simply assigning them just makes an "alias" of it, a different name that points to the same thing.
Your main problem in your second attempt is that you can't assign to an array that way. The second problem is you seem to have come up with some new names in the function call that I can't tell where they came from.
What you want is:
char linkCopy[sizeof(link)];
strncpy(linkCopy, chLastLink, sizeof(link));
but be careful, sizeof does not always work the way you want it to on strings. Use strlen, or use strdup.
Like sean.bright said strdup() is the easiest way to deal with the copy. But strdup() while widely available is not std C. This method also keeps the copied string in the heap.
char *linkCopy = strdup(link);
/* Do some work here */
free(linkCopy);
If you are committed to using a stack allocated string and strncpy() you need some changes. You wrote:
char linkCopy[sizeof(link)]
That creates a char array (aka string) on the stack that is the size of a pointer (probably 4 bytes). Your third parameter to strncpy() has the same problem. You probably want to write:
char linkCopy[strlen(link)+1];
strncpy(linkCopy,link,strlen(link)+1);
You don't say whether you can use C++ instead of C, but if you can use C++ and the STL it's even easier:
std::string newString( original );
Use newString as you would have used the C-style copy above, its semantics are identical. You don't need to free() it, it is a stack object and will be disposed of automatically.