Null-terminated string: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 20:26, 3 August 2005

Revision as of 23:17, 3 August 2005

Line 5:

The null-termination characteristic has historically created security problems related to the length of the string. If the null character is not put to the end of the string for some reason, any following non-related memory area is also processed as a part of the character sequence. This can lead to program crashes or leakage of program internal information to attackers or non-understanding users.

In [[C Plus Plus|C++]] programming language, C strings are used in coordination with another representation of character sequences, the [[Standard Template Library|STL]] ([[ANSI]] standard C++) strings. Thus, it is important to differentiate between the traditional "C strings" and on the other hand the more advanced "strings" that are objects[[object (object-oriented programming)|object]]s of the STL ''string'' [[class (computer science)|class]].