strdup or _strdup?

Solution 1:

Which is correct?

strdup is a perfectly correct POSIX function. Nevertheless, it doesn't belong to the standard, and the ANSI C standard reserves some (broad) classes of function names for further use. Among these, there are

• Function names that begin with str and a lowercase letter

therefore, the MS guys decided to replace strdup with _strdup.

I'd just continue using strdup. It's unlikely the C committee will define strdup to something else than POSIX. Either #define strdup _strdup or silence the warning.

BTW I hope you see this applies to your functions with names like string_list etc., too.

Solution 2:

strdup is not a standard C++ function. but it is apparently a Posix function, and anyway it's a well known function which has been there since K&R C. so if you absolutely must use it, do not fret about any possible name collision, and just write strdup for maximum portability.