Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!decwrl!decvax!tektronix!percival!bucket!servio!penneyj
From: penneyj@servio.UUCP (D. Jason Penney)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Null revisited (briefly)
Keywords: NULL
Message-ID: <102@servio.UUCP>
Date: 14 Feb 89 23:40:44 GMT
References: <13068@steinmetz.ge.com>
Reply-To: penneyj@servio.UUCP (D. Jason Penney)
Organization: Servio Logic Development Corp.; Beaverton, OR
Lines: 19

I strongly disagree with Bill Davidsen's suggestion for null-terminating
C strings.  I submit the following example as safer, cleaner, and more
legible:

char aString[20];

aString[0] = '\0';

'x' is a literal of type char.  Thus, '\0' is the char with value 0,
which is really what was intended here.

When you assign an int or a pointer to a character, the reader ends
up wondering if the type mismatch is unintentional.

-- 
D. Jason Penney                  Ph: (503) 629-8383
Servio Logic Corporation       uucp: ...ogccse!servio!penneyj
15220 NW Greenbrier Parkway #100
Beaverton, OR 97006