Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cmcl2!adm!smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: strings
Message-ID: <10263@smoke.BRL.MIL>
Date: 15 May 89 20:07:07 GMT
References: <10250@socslgw.csl.sony.JUNET>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 13

In article <10250@socslgw.csl.sony.JUNET> diamond@csl.sony.co.jp.csl.sony.co.jp (Norman Diamond) writes:
>Doug Gwyn replied:
>>If you want counted strings, C makes it relatively easy to provide
>>them for yourself.
>Good luck porting other people's strictly conforming programs though.
>They might use C strings.
>Good luck persuading someone else to port your programs.

I don't understand your comment.  Of course the C compiler and library
continue to support null-terminated strings.  Defining your own
counted-string data type and functions doesn't affect that at all.
Furthermore there is no reason your counted-string implementation
should be other than perfectly portable.