Null-terminated string: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 17:55, 3 July 2023

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{{Use dmy dates|date=August 2021}}

In [[computer programming]], a '''null-terminated string''' is a [[character string]] stored as an [[Array data structure|array]] containing the characters and terminated with a ''[[null character]]'' (a character with aan internal value of zero, called "NUL" in this article, not same as the [[glyph]] zero). Alternative names are ''[[C string]]'', which refers to the [[C (programming language)|C programming language]] and '''ASCIIZ'''{{citation needed|date=November 2021}} (although C can use encodings other than [[ASCII]]).

The length of a string is found by searching for the (first) NUL. This can be slow as it takes O(''n'') ([[linear time]]) with respect to the string length. It also means that a string cannot contain a NUL (there is a NUL in memory, but it is after the last character, not {{em|in}} the string).