strncpy removed from the kernel ahead of Linux 7.2

Category: Linux/Kernel
Status: confirmed
Sources: Phoronix
Summary: Covered in Top stories. The six-year, roughly 362-commit effort to remove strncpy from the kernel completes for the Linux 7.2 cycle, replacing it with strscpy, strscpy_pad, strtomem_pad, memcpy_and_pad, or memcpy depending on intent. The change targets the counter-intuitive NUL-termination behavior and redundant zero-filling that made strncpy a recurring bug source.
Why it matters: It retires an error-prone string primitive across the entire kernel tree, reducing a class of buffer-handling defects.