memcpy() vs memmove()

Question

I'm not entirely surprised that your example exhibits no strange behaviour. Try copying str1 to str1+2 instead and see what happens then. (May not actually make a difference, depends on compiler/libraries.)

In general, memcpy is implemented in a simple (but fast) manner. Simplistically, it just loops over the data (in order), copying from one location to the other. This can result in the source being overwritten while it's being read.

Memmove does more work to ensure it handles the overlap correctly.

EDIT:

(Unfortunately, I can't find decent examples, but these will do). Contrast the memcpy and memmove implementations shown here. memcpy just loops, while memmove performs a test to determine which direction to loop in to avoid corrupting the data. These implementations are rather simple. Most high-performance implementations are more complicated (involving copying word-size blocks at a time rather than bytes).

The memory in memcpy cannot overlap or you risk undefined behaviour, while the memory in memmove can overlap.

char a[16];
char b[16];

memcpy(a,b,16);           // valid
memmove(a,b,16);          // Also valid, but slower than memcpy.
memcpy(&a[0], &a[1],10);  // Not valid since it overlaps.
memmove(&a[0], &a[1],10); // valid. 

Some implementations of memcpy might still work for overlapping inputs but you cannot count of that behaviour. While memmove must allow for overlapping.

Just because memcpy doesn't have to deal with overlapping regions, doesn't mean it doesn't deal with them correctly. The call with overlapping regions produces undefined behavior. Undefined behavior can work entirely as you expect on one platform; that doesn't mean it's correct or valid.

Both memcpy and memove do similar things.

But to sight out one difference:

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

char str1[7] = "abcdef";

int main()
{

   printf( "The string: %s\n", str1 );
   memcpy( (str1+6), str1, 10 );
   printf( "New string: %s\n", str1 );

   strcpy_s( str1, sizeof(str1), "aabbcc" );   // reset string


   printf("\nstr1: %s\n", str1);
   printf( "The string: %s\n", str1 );
   memmove( (str1+6), str1, 10 );
   printf( "New string: %s\n", str1 );

}

gives:

The string: abcdef
New string: abcdefabcdefabcd
The string: abcdef
New string: abcdefabcdef

Your demo didn't expose memcpy drawbacks because of "bad" compiler, it does you a favor in Debug version. A release version, however, gives you the same output, but because of optimization.

    memcpy(str1 + 2, str1, 4);
00241013  mov         eax,dword ptr [str1 (243018h)]  // load 4 bytes from source string
    printf("New string: %s\n", str1);
00241018  push        offset str1 (243018h) 
0024101D  push        offset string "New string: %s\n" (242104h) 
00241022  mov         dword ptr [str1+2 (24301Ah)],eax  // put 4 bytes to destination
00241027  call        esi  

The register %eax here plays as a temporary storage, which "elegantly" fixes overlap issue.

The drawback emerges when copying 6 bytes, well, at least part of it.

char str1[9] = "aabbccdd";

int main( void )
{
    printf("The string: %s\n", str1);
    memcpy(str1 + 2, str1, 6);
    printf("New string: %s\n", str1);

    strcpy_s(str1, sizeof(str1), "aabbccdd");   // reset string

    printf("The string: %s\n", str1);
    memmove(str1 + 2, str1, 6);
    printf("New string: %s\n", str1);
}

Output:

The string: aabbccdd
New string: aaaabbbb
The string: aabbccdd
New string: aaaabbcc

Looks weird, it's caused by optimization, too.

    memcpy(str1 + 2, str1, 6);
00341013  mov         eax,dword ptr [str1 (343018h)] 
00341018  mov         dword ptr [str1+2 (34301Ah)],eax // put 4 bytes to destination, earlier than the above example
0034101D  mov         cx,word ptr [str1+4 (34301Ch)]  // HA, new register! Holding a word, which is exactly the left 2 bytes (after 4 bytes loaded to %eax)
    printf("New string: %s\n", str1);
00341024  push        offset str1 (343018h) 
00341029  push        offset string "New string: %s\n" (342104h) 
0034102E  mov         word ptr [str1+6 (34301Eh)],cx  // Again, pulling the stored word back from the new register
00341035  call        esi  

This is why I always choose memmove when trying to copy 2 overlapped memory blocks.

The difference between memcpy and memmove is that

1. in memmove, the source memory of specified size is copied into buffer and then moved to destination. So if the memory is overlapping, there are no side effects.

2. in case of memcpy(), there is no extra buffer taken for source memory. The copying is done directly on the memory so that when there is memory overlap, we get unexpected results.

These can be observed by the following code:

//include string.h, stdio.h, stdlib.h
int main(){
  char a[]="hare rama hare rama";

  char b[]="hare rama hare rama";

  memmove(a+5,a,20);
  puts(a);

  memcpy(b+5,b,20);
  puts(b);
}

Output is:

hare hare rama hare rama
hare hare hare hare hare hare rama hare rama