ustrncat(3)

💖 ustrncat — the Allegro manual, but make it cute 💖

okay bestie, welcome to the ustrncat(3) page from the Allegro manual, aka the Allegro game programming library ✨ this one's a string function and she's a little bit of a chaos goblin, so buckle up 🎀

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

#include <allegro.h>

char *ustrncat(char *dest, const char *src, int n);

💅 DESCRIPTION 💅

so basically ustrncat() is exactly like ustrcat() — same vibe, same energy — EXCEPT that it won't append more than n characters from src onto the end of dest. that's the whole ✨twist✨

now here's the part where the details matter, so listen up 🫶

• if the terminating null character in src shows up before n characters have been written, that null character does get copied — but no other characters get written after it. she stops there, periodt.
• if n characters get written before a terminating null is ever encountered, the function appends its own null character to dest — which means n+1 characters end up being written total. do the math, it's giving sneaky 💀

⚠️ okay real talk: you should try to avoid this function, because it is very easy to overflow the destination buffer. like, dangerously easy. not cute. if you can, use ustrncat's better-behaved sibling ustrzncat instead 👑 (yes, the extra z is doing a lot of heavy lifting here, iykyk)

🦋 RETURN VALUE 🦋

the return value is just the value of dest. that's it, that's the whole tea 🍓

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

• uconvert(3)
• ustrcat(3)
• ustrzncat(3)

and that's the page!! this came to you straight from the Allegro manual, version 4.4.3, on ustrncat(3) — stay safe out there and please don't overflow ur buffers, love u bestie 💜🧚