C4996 (function unsafe) warning for strcpy but not for memcpy

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In general, to compile C code you need a conforming C compiler. Visual Studio is a non-conforming C++ compiler.

You get the warning because Visual Studio is bad. See this.

C4996 appears whenever you use a function that Microsoft regards as obsolete. Apparently, Microsoft has decided that they should dictate the future of the C language, rather than the ISO C working group. Thus you get false warnings for perfectly fine code. The compiler is the problem.

There is nothing wrong with the strcpy() function, that’s a myth. This function has existed for some 30-40 years and every little bit of it is properly documented. So what the function does and what it does not should not come as a surprise, even to beginner C programmers.

What strcpy does and does not:

  • It copies a null-terminated string into another memory location.
  • It does not take any responsibility for error handling.
  • It does not fix bugs in the caller application.
  • It does not take any responsibility for educating C programmers.

Because of the last remark above, you must know the following before calling strcpy:

  • If you pass a string of unknown length to strcpy, without checking its length in advance, you have a bug in the caller application.
  • If you pass some chunk of data which does not end with \0, you have a bug in the caller application.
  • If you pass two pointers to strcpy(), which point at memory locations that overlap, you invoke undefined behavior. Meaning you have a bug in the caller application.

For example, in the code you posted, you never initialized the arrays, so your program will likely crash and burn. That bug isn’t in the slightest related to the strcpy() function and will not be solved by swapping out strcpy() for something else.

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