strcat or strcpy?

hi and thanks for your rsponces ,but im stock again at the nd of my progrand, waht i need to do is concanate first 2 characters of one string to another, it does it fine but i get a whole bunch of other character at the end of it plus the same string again, how do i stop that from happening here is some of my code, i have included <cstring>

Code:

 
int main()
{
	char string1[10];
	char string2[15];
	char string3[15];
	char string4[8];

cout <<"Enter string1: ";
cin.getline(string1, 10, '\n');
cout <<"Enter string2: ";
cin.getline(string2, 15, '\n');

cout<<endl<<string1<<" is "<<strlen(string1)<<" characters in length"<<endl;
cout<<string2<<" is "<<strlen(string2)<<" characters in length"<<endl;

cout<<endl<<string1<<" is "<< sizeof(string1) << " characters in size"<<endl;
cout<<string2<<" is "<< sizeof(string2) << " characters in size"<<endl; 

if (strcmp(string1,string2) !=1 || 0)
{
cout<<endl<<string1<<" is less than  "<<string2<<endl;
	
}		
	

cout<<endl<< "string3 after concatenation is "<<strcat(string1,string2)<<endl;


cout<<endl<<"String 4 is "  <<strncpy(string2,string1,3)<<endl;


cout<<endl<<"String 1 is now " <<strncpy(string2, string1,7)<<endl;

return 0;
}

im entering billy for string 1
bob for string 2

strncpy doesn't add a NULL at the end unless there's more room, strcat is better.

You have to ensure that string1 is large enough to accomodate the characters of both string1 AND string2. All strcat does is copy the contents from one string onto the end of the contents of another string. It doesn't add more memory onto the end of string1 to accomodate the new data.

i didn't really read the code, or the question (sorry), but i think this line

if (strcmp(string1,string2) !=1 || 0)

won't give you the results you want.. if you want to test if strcmp returns 1 or returns 0, you needs to do

Code:

if((strcmp(string1, string2) != 1) || (strcmp(string1, string2) != 0))
{
   feedTheFish();
}

//edit: haHA! i win

Originally posted by Pioneer
strncpy doesn't add a NULL at the end unless there's more room, strcat is better.

... but they do different things!

>>if (strcmp(string1,string2) !=1 || 0)
This is a syntax problem, did you mean something more like this:
>>if (strcmp(string1,string2) <= 0)

[edit]dammit, beaten!

[edit2]I've closed this thread that has exactly the same question on it. Please don't start new threads when there is no need.

Originally posted by MadHatter

Code:

if((strcmp(string1, string2) != 1) || (strcmp(string1, string2) != 0))

I doubt this is what he wants, since this is a tautology (always true). You could as well have if(true) instead, since it gives the same result.

Use > 0 if the first string should be larger than the second
Use < 0 if the first string should be smaller than the second
Use == 0 if both strings should be equal
Use >= 0 and/or <= for a combination of the above
Use != 0 if either larger or smaller, but not equal

yea, i wasn't sure about which values are returned when.. i just wasn't sure what values he needed, and it looked like that was what he was going for.. oh well