snprintf and Visual Studio 2010

Question

I'm unfortunate enough to be stuck using VS 2010 for a project, and noticed the following code still doesn't build using the non-standards compliant compiler:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

int main (void)
{
    char buffer[512];

    snprintf(buffer, sizeof(buffer), "SomeString");

    return 0;
}

(fails compilation with the error: C3861: 'snprintf': identifier not found)

I remember this being the case way back with VS 2005 and am shocked to see it still hasn't been fixed.

Does any one know if Microsoft has any plans to move their standard C libraries into the year 2010?

Answer 1

I believe the Windows equivalent is sprintf_s

Answer 2

snprintf is not part of C89. It's standard only in C99. Microsoft has no plan supporting C99.

(But it's also standard in C++0x...!)

You could still use

#if _MSC_VER
#define snprintf _snprintf
#endif

as a workaround.

Answer 3

You should use

_snprintf(buffer, sizeof(buffer), "SomeString");

or better _snprintf_s function (see http://msdn.microsoft.com/de-de/library/f30dzcf6%28VS.80%29.aspx):

_snprintf_s(buffer, _countof(buffer), 100, "SomeString");

or

_snprintf_s(buffer, _countof(buffer), _countof(buffer), "SomeString");