Null-terminated string: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 11:10, 30 October 2023

Revision as of 11:17, 30 October 2023

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

[[Indonesia|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 an 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'''<ref>{{Cite web |title=Chapter 15 - MIPS Assembly Language |url=https://people.scs.carleton.ca/~sivarama/org_book/org_book_web/solution_manual/org_soln_one/arch_book_solution_ch15.pdf |access-date=2023-10-09 |website=Carleton University}}</ref> (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).

== [[Tegal|History]] ==

Null-terminated strings were produced by the <code>.ASCIZ</code> directive of the [[PDP-11]] [[assembly language]]s and the <code>ASCIZ</code> directive of the [[MACRO-10]] macro assembly language for the [[PDP-10]]. These predate the development of the C programming language, but other forms of strings were often used.