Re: Null-terminated strings: the final analysis.

On 12/04/09 20:16, Mark Wooding wrote:
Joe Wright<joewwright@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

I believe strings can contain tabs, and other things that don't print but I
agree strings cannot contain the NUL character.

... by a trivial consequence of C's definition of a string, no less.

Exactly - definitionally.

Further, a text file is corrupted by the NUL character in a line.

Only because C strings can't represent lines of text containing a zero
byte.

Again we're into definitions: my definition of a text file is one that doesn't contain non-alphanumeric characters. So if you send a null into such a file, its corrupted.

Using this to justify C's representative inadequacy is circular.

But then so is the counter-argument that is being made. C defines a string as a null-terminated array of characters, therefore its circular to complain that a string can't contain a null.

And anyway, if you want char arrays containing nulls, C can do those, no problem.

--
Mark McIntyre

CLC FAQ <http://c-faq.com/>
CLC readme: <http://www.ungerhu.com/jxh/clc.welcome.txt>
.

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