Replacements for deprecated strcpy/strcat when using char*

Question

I have code for a 'zombie translator' as an example from my professor. From what I can tell it takes a string of english words and applies a few rules to it via functions. It currently uses strcpy and strcat to do this, however it will not compile even if I change them to strcpy_s. Without including the other functions (for the sake of space), here is my main function as an example

int main()
{
char english[MAX];
char zombie[MAX];
char zombie_word[MAX];
int pos_e; /* Current position in english line of text */
int pos_z; /* Current position in line of translated zombie text */

while (1) {
    pos_e = 0;
    pos_z = 0;
    strcpy(zombie, "");

    cout << ("Enter English text: ");
    cin >> english;

    /* This loop translates the line from english to zombie. */
    do
    {
        get_next_word(english, &pos_e, zombie, &pos_z);

        translate_word(english, &pos_e, zombie_word, &pos_z);

        strcat(zombie, zombie_word);

    } while (pos_e < strlen(english));

    print_translation(zombie);
}
return 0;
}

So more specifically, what should i do to the line strcat(zombie, zombie_word); to make it compile properly in Visual Studio 2015?

It's not for a grade, I just really want to be able to understand this before the midterm, and it's a bit difficult to play around with it. I would prefer not to have to disable it through _CRT_SECURE_NO_WARNINGS so that I know what to do if I need to do something similar.

Perhaps changing the char variables into strings or something like that? I've been looking around for awhile and can't find the actual process. Thank you very much for any assistance, I greatly appreciate your time.

Answer 1

From Microsoft: strncat_s

You need to include the length of the array to prevent buffer overflow dangers.

The API is:

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

numberOfElements is size of destination array.