Thread: Memory Overlap and memcpy function.

Hello everybody.

Code:

#include<stdio.h>
#include<string.h>

int main(void)
{
    char str[20] = "HELLOSIR";
    
    memcpy( str + 2 , str + 1 , 4 );
    
    puts( str );
    
    return 0;
                  
}

If I have understood well the above code can be a typical example that decribes a memory overlap. Some of data to the destination (str + 2 ) will be copied before its copy.

Code:

  void *memcpy( void * restrict s1, const void * restrict s2, size_t n );

According to the above example I think there is no quarantee even the restrict to the pointer that we won't have overlap.It is legal to use the same pointer and not other in order to have access on the data.So for this the behaviour is not undefined right?

But how memcpy works? I mean I am taking

Code:

 HEELLOIR

as output rather than

Code:

 HEEEEEIR

So the behaviour due to overlap is undefined?

p.s The const on const void * restrict s2 denotes that data can't change from s2 itself?

A restricted pointer is supposed to be the only pointer to its object.
It's the programmer's responsibility to ensure that's true.
Your call is therefore undefined since str+2 and str+1 point into the same string.

memmove is the correct standard library function to use to when the buffers may overloap.

The const in memcpy's declaration says that memcpy won't write to the object through the second pointer.

A pointer of any type can be converted to void * automatically , so why I can't pass strcmp itself to qsort,since qsort requires a comparison function with two const void * parameters?

On this case why const char * from strcmp won't be converted to const void * ?

Thank you

And even if you force the compiler to accept strcmp as the compare function, it would just be comparing the strings addresses (as strings) ! That's because qsort will pass char**'s (as void*'s) but strcmp will treat them as char*'s. It needs to dereference the pointers twice but it's coded to do so only once.

So you need something like this to point strcmp to the right data:

Code:

int comp(const void *a, const void *b) {
    return strcmp(*(const char**)a, *(const char**)b);
}
...
    char *logic[] = {"nor", "xor", "and", "not", "or"};
    qsort(logic, sizeof(logic)/sizeof(*logic), sizeof(*logic), comp);