c++ - strdup or _strdup?

Question

When I use strdup in Microsoft Visual C++, it warns me:

warning C4996: 'strdup': The POSIX name for this item is deprecated. Instead, use the ISO C++ conformant name: _strdup. See online help for details.

Thus it seems _strdup is correct.

But when I use _strdup in GCC (Fedora Linux OS), the compiler shows an error:

error: ‘_strdup’ was not declared in this scope

With GCC and Linux, compiler does not show any error for strdup.

Which is correct - strdup or _strdup?

Note: I include <string.h> in my code.

Answer 1

Which is correct?

strdup is a perfectly correct POSIX function. Nevertheless, it doesn't belong to the standard, and the ANSI C standard reserves some (broad) classes of function names for further use. Among these, there are

• Function names that begin with str and a lowercase letter

therefore, the MS guys decided to replace strdup with _strdup.

I'd just continue using strdup. It's unlikely the C committee will define strdup to something else than POSIX. Either #define strdup _strdup or silence the warning.

BTW I hope you see this applies to your functions with names like string_list etc., too.