Re: NUL to terminate strings; was reinventing ASCII?

Torben Ægidius Mogensen wrote:

> James Harris <james.harris.1@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> writes:
> 
>> On 6 Mar, 10:34, torb...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 (Torben Ægidius Mogensen)
>> wrote:
>>> James Harris <james.harri...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> writes:
>> ...
>>> Why would we need a null character?  I know that it in C is used as
>>> end-of-string marker, but that is a horrible design decision.  If
>>> any single character should mark the end of a string, it should be
>>> EOT.
>>
>> My vague inference (which I've never had tested) is that the null
>> string terminator is a consequence of C's pointer model. [...]
>>
>> 1. strings need a terminating character
> 
> True, but why does the terminating character need to be null?  There
> is in the ASCII alphabet a control character EOT representing
> end-of-text.  That seems like a much more appropriate terminating
> character.

EOT is not present in C's basic source or execution character set, i.e,
it is not available on all system where C is implemented.

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