Null-terminated string: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 08:56, 11 October 2018

Revision as of 09:01, 11 December 2018

Line 1:

{{see also|String (computer science)#Null-terminated}}

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]] (<code>'\0'</code>, called NUL in [[ASCII]]). Alternative names are '''[[C string]]''', which refers to the [[C (programming language)|C programming language]] and '''ASCIIZ''' (note thatalthough C stringscan douse notencodings imply the useother ofthan ASCII).

The length of a C string is found by searching for the (first) NUL byte. This can be slow as it takes O(''n'') ([[linear time]]) with respect to the string length. It also means that a NUL cannot be inside the string, as the only NUL is the one marking the end.