Definitely not safer (perhaps even more dangerous due to its unexpected semantics), but I do think it's slightly newer. It doesn't appear in K&R 1st edition, re

Definitely not safer (perhaps even more dangerous due to its unexpected semantics), but I do think it's slightly newer. It doesn't appear in K&R 1st edition, released in 1978, but does appear in K&R 2nd edition from 1988. OpenBSD claims it first appeared in Version 7 Unix, which was released in 1979. https://man.openbsd.org/strncat.3 https://man.openbsd.org/strncat.3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Version_7_Unix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Version_7_Unix