[Asterisk-Dev] Questions Regarding the ast_copy_string() Janitor Project

[Kevin P. Fleming]

Matt Roth wrote:

> How desirable is the replacement of malloc() + memset()  with calloc() 
> calls?  I'm seeing this behavior in a lot of places, so if it should 
> generally be avoided in favor of calloc() I'll submit some patches.

It's on the list, although Russell has some stuff he's been working on 
to abstract it even more. Find him on IRC to ask about it.

> What about the use of strncpy()?  Is ast_copy_string() meant to be a 
> wholesale replacement or does strncpy() still have its place?

Only when the entire source string is being copied; the semantics of 
ast_copy_string have not been confirmed to be the same as strncpy when 
only a portion of the source string is being copied... it may very well 
be usable in that case too.

The differences between the two are that ast_copy_string does _not_ 
zero-fill the destination buffer, and it _does_ guarantee that the 
resulting string will always be zero-terminated. Otherwise they perform 
the same operations.