NAME¶
memcpy - copy memory area
SYNOPSIS¶
#include <string.h>
void *memcpy(void *dest, const void *src, size_t n);
DESCRIPTION¶
The memcpy() function copies n bytes from memory area src
to memory area dest. The memory areas must not overlap. Use
memmove(3) if the memory areas do overlap.
RETURN VALUE¶
The memcpy() function returns a pointer to dest.
ATTRIBUTES¶
For an explanation of the terms used in this section, see attributes(7).
Interface |
Attribute |
Value |
memcpy () |
Thread safety |
MT-Safe |
POSIX.1-2001, POSIX.1-2008, C89, C99, SVr4, 4.3BSD.
NOTES¶
Failure to observe the requirement that the memory areas do not overlap has been
the source of significant bugs. (POSIX and the C standards are explicit that
employing memcpy() with overlapping areas produces undefined behavior.)
Most notably, in glibc 2.13 a performance optimization of memcpy() on
some platforms (including x86-64) included changing the order in which bytes
were copied from src to dest.
This change revealed breakages in a number of applications that
performed copying with overlapping areas. Under the previous implementation,
the order in which the bytes were copied had fortuitously hidden the bug,
which was revealed when the copying order was reversed. In glibc 2.14, a
versioned symbol was added so that old binaries (i.e., those linked against
glibc versions earlier than 2.14) employed a memcpy() implementation
that safely handles the overlapping buffers case (by providing an
"older" memcpy() implementation that was aliased to
memmove(3)).
COLOPHON¶
This page is part of release 4.16 of the Linux man-pages project. A
description of the project, information about reporting bugs, and the latest
version of this page, can be found at https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.