BZERO(3) BSD Library Functions Manual BZERO(3)
NAME
bzero, explicit_bzero -- write zeroes to a byte string
LIBRARY
Standard C Library (libc, -lc)
SYNOPSIS
#include <strings.h>
void
bzero(void *b, size_t len);
void
explicit_bzero(void *b, size_t len);
DESCRIPTION
The bzero() function writes len zero bytes to the string b. If len is zero, bzero() does nothing.
The explicit_bzero() variant behaves the same, 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
memset(3), swab(3)
HISTORY
A bzero() function appeared in 4.3BSD. Its prototype existed previously in <string.h> before it was moved to <strings.h> for IEEE Std
1003.1-2001 (``POSIX.1'') compliance.
The explicit_bzero() function first appeared in OpenBSD 5.5 and FreeBSD 11.0.
BSD
October 6, 2014 BSD