explicit_bzero (3)

Leading comments

Copyright (c) 1990, 1991 The Regents of the University of California.
All rights reserved.

This code is derived from software contributed to Berkeley by
Chris Torek.
Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
are met:
1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
   notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
2. Redistributions in binary form must reprodu...

(The comments found at the beginning of the groff file "man3/explicit_bzero.3bsd".)

NAME

explicit_bzero - write zeroes to a byte string

LIBRARY

Lb libbsd

SYNOPSIS

In string.h (See libbsd(7) for include usage.) Ft void Fn explicit_bzero void *buf size_t len

DESCRIPTION

The Fn explicit_bzero function writes Fa len zero bytes to the string Fa buf . If Fa len is zero, Fn explicit_bzero does nothing.

The Fn explicit_bzero variant behaves the same as the Fn bzero function, but will not be removed by a compiler's dead store optimization pass, making it useful for clearing sensitive memory such as a password.

SEE ALSO

bzero(3), memset(3), swab(3)

HISTORY

The Fn explicit_bzero function first appeared in Ox 5.5 .