Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!EXPO.LCS.MIT.EDU!rws
From: rws@EXPO.LCS.MIT.EDU (Bob Scheifler)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: stupid C question
Message-ID: <8812311753.AA00790@EXPO.LCS.MIT.EDU>
Date: 31 Dec 88 17:53:03 GMT
References: <4543@xenna.Encore.COM>
Sender: daemon@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU
Organization: The Internet
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    I'm pretty sure the confusion, if any, is some belief that
    strlen("abc") should return the same result as sizeof("abc") which is
    false.

My confusion was more looking at K&R, p99, which says "the compiler
terminates the array with the character \0 so that programs can find
the end".  It wasn't clear whether "terminates" meant that it was
considered "inside" or "outside" the array.  It goes on to say
"The length in storage is thus one more than ..."  But I noted that
it was (careful/careless) to say "length in storage" rather than
"length of the array".

    What's worse are compilers (known to exist!) which return sizeof(char *)
    for sizeof(string constant), that is unacceptable but worth a moment's
    thought when relying on these semantics or trying to track down a problem.

I'm getting pretty tired of working around broken compilers ...