What is the difference between memcmp, strcmp and strncmp in C?

In short:

• strcmp compares null-terminated C strings
• strncmp compares at most N characters of null-terminated C strings
• memcmp compares binary byte buffers of N bytes

So, if you have these strings:

const char s1[] = "atoms\0\0\0\0";  // extra null bytes at end
const char s2[] = "atoms\0abc";     // embedded null byte
const char s3[] = "atomsaaa";

Then these results hold true:

strcmp(s1, s2) == 0      // strcmp stops at null terminator
strcmp(s1, s3) != 0      // Strings are different
strncmp(s1, s3, 5) == 0  // First 5 characters of strings are the same
memcmp(s1, s3, 5) == 0   // First 5 bytes are the same
strncmp(s1, s2, 8) == 0  // Strings are the same up through the null terminator
memcmp(s1, s2, 8) != 0   // First 8 bytes are different