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Just a silly but quick question: Why do some functions that work with c style strings such as: fgets, strcpy, strcat, etc, have a return type of char* when there is a variable in the parameter list that stores the output? ie, why is it:
char *strcat ( char *dest, const char *src );
and not
void strcat ( char *dest, const char *src );
or even just returning the result by doing
char *strcat (const char *src );
I mean I can see how this would be useful if you are nesting calls to these functions (which is dangerous) but I don't see why you need to have both a destination variable AND returnt he result...
I'm reviewing some c programming stuff and can't believe how much I forgot!
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strcat() — Concatenate Strings The strcat() function concatenates string2 to string1 and ends the resulting string with the null character. The strcat() function operates on null-ended strings. The string arguments to the function should contain a null character (\0) that marks the end of the string.
Return Value The strcat() function returns a pointer to the concatenated string ( string1 ).
In the C Programming Language, the strcpy function copies the string pointed to by s2 into the object pointed to by s1. It returns a pointer to the destination.
char* strcpy(char* destination, const char* source); The strcpy() function copies the string pointed by source (including the null character) to the destination. The strcpy() function also returns the copied string.
For the sake of ease of usage, so that these functions can be used in larger expressions or can be nested.
Something like:
strcat(path, strcpy(file, "foo.txt"));
or
printf("[%s]\n", strcat(string1, string2));
Needless to say these usages can and should be avoided.
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