Null-terminated string

In computer programming, a null-terminated string is a character string stored as an array containing the characters and terminated with a null character (a character with an internal value of zero, called "NUL" in this article, not same as the glyph zero). Alternative names are C string, which refers to the C programming language and ASCIIZ (although C can use encodings other than ASCII). The length of a string is found by searching for the (first) NUL. This can be slow as it takes O(n) (linear time) with respect to the string length. It also means that a string cannot contain a NUL (there is a NUL in memory, but it is after the last character, not the string). Null-terminated strings were produced by the .ASCIZ directive of the PDP-11 assembly languages and the ASCIZ directive of the MACRO-10 macro assembly language for the PDP-10. These predate the development of the C programming language, but other forms of strings were often used. At the time C (and the languages that it was derived from) was developed, memory was extremely limited, so using only one byte of overhead to store the length of a string was attractive. The only popular alternative at that time, usually called a "Pascal string" (a more modern term is "length-prefixed"), used a leading byte to store the length of the string. This allows the string to contain NUL and made finding the length of an already stored string need only one memory access (O(1) (constant) time), but limited string length to 255 characters (on a machine using 8-bit bytes). C designer Dennis Ritchie chose to follow the convention of null-termination to avoid the limitation on the length of a string and because maintaining the count seemed, in his experience, less convenient than using a terminator. This had some influence on CPU instruction set design. Some CPUs in the 1970s and 1980s, such as the Zilog Z80 and the DEC VAX, had dedicated instructions for handling length-prefixed strings.

About this result

This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.

Related concepts (8)

Related courses (20)

Related lectures (183)

CS-101: Advanced information, computation, communication I

Discrete mathematics is a discipline with applications to almost all areas of study. It provides a set of indispensable tools to computer science in particular. This course reviews (familiar) topics a

ME-213: Programmation pour ingénieur

Mettre en pratique les bases de la programmation vues au semestre précédent. Développer un logiciel structuré. Méthode de debug d'un logiciel. Introduction à la programmation scientifique. Introductio

CS-108: Practice of object-oriented programming

Les étudiants perfectionnent leurs connaissances en Java et les mettent en pratique en réalisant un projet de taille conséquente. Ils apprennent à utiliser et à mettre en œuvre les principaux types de

Null character

The null character (also null terminator) is a control character with the value zero. It is present in many character sets, including those defined by the Baudot and ITA2 codes, ISO/IEC 646 (or ASCII), the C0 control code, the Universal Coded Character Set (or Unicode), and EBCDIC. It is available in nearly all mainstream programming languages. It is often abbreviated as NUL (or NULL, though in some contexts that term is used for the null pointer). In 8-bit codes, it is known as a null byte.

Null-terminated string

Printf

The printf family of functions in the C programming language are a set of functions that take a format string as input among a variable sized list of other values and produce as output a string that corresponds to the format specifier and given input values. The string is written in a simple template language: characters are usually copied literally into the function's output, but format specifiers, which start with a character, indicate the location and method to translate a piece of data (such as a number) to characters.

Logic and Algorithms CS-101: Advanced information, computation, communication I

Introduces logic, algorithms, counting, and probabilities in computer science, emphasizing problem-solving techniques.

Advanced Counting: Logic, Structures, and Algorithms CS-101: Advanced information, computation, communication I

Explores advanced counting, logic, structures, algorithms, and probabilities in solving linear homogeneous recurrence relations.

Engineering Projects Overview ME-213: Programmation pour ingénieur

Provides an overview of engineering projects, troubleshooting tips, and practical demonstrations on signal processing and Arduino integration.