Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bbn!rochester!cornell!batcomputer!itsgw!steinmetz!davidsen
From: davidsen@steinmetz.steinmetz.UUCP (William E. Davidsen Jr)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Null-terminated C strings
Message-ID: <8342@steinmetz.steinmetz.UUCP>
Date: 4 Jan 88 14:31:44 GMT
References: <261@ivory.SanDiego.NCR.COM| <164@sdeggo.UUCP> <174@quick.COM> <14116@think.UUCP> <2447@hall.cray.com>
Reply-To: davidsen@crdos1.UUCP (bill davidsen)
Organization: General Electric CRD, Schenectady, NY
Lines: 34

In article <2447@hall.cray.com> blu@hall.UUCP (Brian Utterback) writes:
| In article <14116@think.UUCP| barmar@sauron.think.com.UUCP (Barry Margolin) writes:
| | stuff about null-terminated strings
| 
| Amen to that.  I just spent hours trying to find out what was wrong with
| a rasterfile to laserprinter filter.  It turned out that the problem is 
| that fprintf cannot output a null.
This is just not so. Try fprintf("%c", '\000') and it works fine.
fprintf works with standard C strings which are null terminated. Why
complain because it doesn't do what you want? I suggest using putc if
you want to force any character out.

|                                     At least the compiler should issue
| a warning if it eats a null.
I have never seem a compiler eat a null. For example:
   main() {
     static char xx[] = {"abc\000def"};
     printf("%d bytes\n", sizeof xx);
   }
returns a size of eight bytes. The null is not "eaten," it just doesn't
work the way you want it to.

| a warning if it eats a null.  I mean, what is the use of being able to
| specify a character in a string (i.e. \000) if the compiler won't really
| use it?  And it KNEW it, and didn't tell me. Sheesh.
See above.

I'm not against length defined strings, but I think that a posting like
this indicates that the poster didn't understand the problem. Forgive me
if you understood but failed to express yourself correctly.
-- 
	bill davidsen		(wedu@ge-crd.arpa)
  {uunet | philabs | seismo}!steinmetz!crdos1!davidsen
"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me