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NAME

bzero, explicit_bzero — write zeroes to a byte string

SYNOPSIS

#include <string.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

The bzero() function first appeared in 4.2BSD. The explicit_bzero() function first appeared in OpenBSD 5.5.