How to get rid of extra data in character buffers for key and data

Question

Hi -
Using the C API, I am using a cursor to just pull all the key/value pairs from a database.
Here is the relevant code:
/* Initialize key/data structures. */
memset(&key, 0, sizeof(key));
memset(&data, 0, sizeof(data));
key.flags = DB_DBT_MALLOC;
data.flags = DB_DBT_MALLOC;
if((ret = dbp->cursor(dbp, NULL, &cursor, 0)) != 0) {
dbp->err(dbp, ret, "%s", DATABASE);
goto err;
while((ret = cursor->c_get(cursor, &key, &data, DB_NEXT)) == 0) {
fprintf(cgiOut, "%s|||%s\n", (char *)key.data, (char *)data.data);
free(key.data);
free(data.data);
if(ret != DB_NOTFOUND) {
dbp->err(dbp, ret, "cursor->c_get");
goto err;
This produces lines that in many cases contain extra characters at the ends, as though the malloced data was not being cleared before use. I wrote this routine originally in Java, and solved the problem there with the "setReuseBuffer(false)" Database Entry routine. Is there something similar in C?
Garey Mills

Answer 1

Sandra -
I am using 4.5. I have solved the problem, however, by using the following code
while((ret = cursor->c_get(cursor, &key, &data, DB_NEXT)) == 0) {
char keyd, datad;
keyd = (char *)key.data;
datad = (char*)data.data;
keyd[key.size] = '\0';
datad[data.size] = '\0';
So I am just using the size data returned to null terminate the strings in the buffers. Now everything works. Thanks for your response;
Garey Mills