STRDUP(3)

NAME
strdup, strndup, strdupa, strndupa - duplicate a string

SYNOPSIS
#include <string.h>

char *strdup(const char *s);

char *strndup(const char *s, size_t n);
char *strdupa(const char *s);
char *strndupa(const char *s, size_t n);

Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see feature_test_macros(7)):

strdup():
    _XOPEN_SOURCE >= 500
        || /* Since glibc 2.12: */ _POSIX_C_SOURCE >= 200809L
        || /* Glibc versions <= 2.19: */ _BSD_SOURCE || _SVID_SOURCE
strndup():
    Since glibc 2.10:
        _POSIX_C_SOURCE >= 200809L
    Before glibc 2.10:
        _GNU_SOURCE
strdupa(), strndupa(): _GNU_SOURCE

DESCRIPTION
The strdup() function returns a pointer to a new string which is a duplicate of the string s. Memory for the new string is obtained with malloc(3), and can be freed with free(3).

The strndup() function is similar, but copies at most n bytes. If s is longer than n, only n bytes are copied, and a terminating null byte ('\0') is added.

strdupa() and strndupa() are similar, but use alloca(3) to allocate the buffer. They are available only when using the GNU GCC suite, and suffer from the same limitations described in alloca(3).

RETURN VALUE
On success, the strdup() function returns a pointer to the duplicated string. It returns NULL if insufficient memory was available, with errno set to indicate the cause of the error.

ERRORS

ENOMEM
    Insufficient memory available to allocate duplicate string.

ATTRIBUTES
For an explanation of the terms used in this section, see attributes(7).
Interface | Attribute | Value
 | Thread safety | MT-Safe

CONFORMING TO
strdup() conforms to SVr4, 4.3BSD, POSIX.1-2001. strndup() conforms to POSIX.1-2008. strdupa() and strndupa() are GNU extensions.

SEE ALSO
alloca(3), calloc(3), free(3), malloc(3), realloc(3), string(3), wcsdup(3)

COLOPHON
This page is part of release 4.11 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/.