"strncpy_s" Not Working

Question

I'm trying to use strncpy_s to characters from one word to an array (I cannot use strncpy in Visual Studio 2013 and I'm totally new to strncpy_s). I keep getting these errors whatever I do:

Error 1 error C2660: 'strncpy_s' : function does not take 3 arguments

Error 2 IntelliSense: no instance of overloaded function "strncpy_s" matches the argument list argument types are: (char *, char, int)

The purpose of my code is:

If user inputs, for example, "HELLO" (that is, text = HELLO) Then ->

Copy HELLO to first_array [0]
Copy  ELLO to first_array [1]
Copy   LLO to first_array [2]
Copy    LO to first_array [3]
Copy     O to first_array [4]

And here's my code:

int _tmain(int argc, _TCHAR* argv[])
{
    char text[32];
    cin >> text;
    char* first_array[] = {""};
    int n = strlen(text);

    for (int i = 0; i < n; i++)
    {
        strncpy_s(first_array[i], text[i], n-i);
    }
}

EDIT 1. Modified the code a bit more, now the program runs, but after inputing a text, it suddenly gives me the "example.exe stopped working" error.

int _tmain(int argc, _TCHAR* argv[])
{
    char* text[32];
    cin >> *text;
    char* first_array[] = {""};
    //int n = strlen(text);
    int n = sizeof(text);

    for (int i = 0; i < n; i++)
    {
        strncpy_s(first_array[i], n - i, text[i], 32);
    }

Answer 1

Your code has several issues.

First of all, your call to strncpy_s does not follow the declaration of strncpy_s, which lists four parameters (if the first parameter is a char * as in your case):

errno_t strncpy_s(
   char *strDest,
   size_t numberOfElements,
   const char *strSource,
   size_t count
);

But much more importantly, you state that you would like to end up with multiple strings in an array first_array[], each holding a shorter version of the input string than the last. But the first_array[] you declared only holds one char * string, the one you initialized first_array[0] to, which is exactly one character long (the terminating null byte):

char* first_array[] = {""};

Even if you declared it to hold five char * (the initialization is not necessary as you copy the contents over anyway)...

char * first_array[5];

...you still haven't allocated memory space for each of the five char * strings. You just have five pointers pointing nowhere, and would have to allocate memory dynamically, depending on user input.

Because I haven't even talked about what happens if the user enters more than five characters, let alone 32...

At this point, even if I would post "working" code, it would teach you little. You are apparently following some kind of tutorial, or actually attempting to learn by trial & error. I think the right answer here would be:

Get a different tutorial. Even better, get a good book on C or a good book on C++ as online tutorials are notoriously lacking.