Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!hao!ames!umd5!uvaarpa!mcnc!thorin!polk!leech
From: leech@polk.cs.unc.edu (Jonathan Leech)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Null-terminated C strings
Message-ID: <503@thorin.cs.unc.edu>
Date: 24 Dec 87 20:42:46 GMT
References: <174@quick.COM> <14116@think.UUCP> <2447@hall.cray.com> <3087@phri.UUCP>
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Reply-To: leech@polk.UUCP (Jonathan Leech)
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In article <3087@phri.UUCP> roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith) writes:
>There is nothing strictly illegal about imbedding a null in a
>string constant, but it is strange.  One might want to do:
>
>	printf ("this\000probably won't print\n"+5);
>
>and the compiler should let you do it, although I can't think of any valid
>reason offhand you would *want* to do such a thing.

    To let people patch site-specific data in code distributed
binary-only e.g.

    static char *termtypes[] = {
	"ADM3A\0Patching area",     /* VMS Foreign Terminal type FT1 */
	...etc

    something like this showed up in code I saw a few years ago.
    Jon Leech (leech@cs.unc.edu)    __@/
    ``...there are many places where gravity has its practical
      applications as far as the Universe is concerned.''
	- R. P. Feynman, _The Character of Physical Law_