Copying value from char pointer to a char array

Question

I am having a pointer *ip_address_server which holds the ip address of the server :

   in_addr * address = (in_addr * )record->h_addr;
    char *ip_address_server = inet_ntoa(* address);

Clearly, when I use printf to print the value of it, it gets nicely printed.

printf("p address %s" , ip_address_server);

But now if I declare an array of say size 20 to hold the value then I need to copy the content from the pointer to the array.

char host_name[20];

To copy the value I used a for loop. But the value that I print later is not the right value.

for(int i = 0; ip_address_server[i] != '\0'; i++) 
        host_name[i] = ip_address_server[i];
    printf("hostname %s \n" , host_name);

I think there is some error with the terminating condition.

Am I wrong in my approach or is there any alternative way out for this?

Answer 1

Your loop does not copy the '\0' byte.

Also, why don't you just use strcpy (or safer strncpy) or memcpy?