c - How strcpy works behind the scenes?

Question

This may be a very basic question for some. I was trying to understand how strcpy works actually behind the scenes. for example, in this code

#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
int main ()
{
  char s[6] = "Hello";
  char a[20] = "world isnsadsdas";
  strcpy(s,a);

  printf("%s
",s);
  printf("%d
", sizeof(s));
  return 0;
}

As I am declaring s to be a static array with size less than that of source. I thought it wont print the whole word, but it did print world isnsadsdas .. So, I thought that this strcpy function might be allocating new size if destination is less than the source. But now, when I check sizeof(s), it is still 6, but it is printing out more than that. Hows that working actually?

Answer 1

You've just caused undefined behaviour, so anything can happen. In your case, you're getting lucky and it's not crashing, but you shouldn't rely on that happening. Here's a simplified strcpy implementation (but it's not too far off from many real ones):

char *strcpy(char *d, const char *s)
{
   char *saved = d;
   while (*s)
   {
       *d++ = *s++;
   }
   *d = 0;
   return saved;
}

sizeof is just returning you the size of your array from compile time. If you use strlen, I think you'll see what you expect. But as I mentioned above, relying on undefined behaviour is a bad idea.