Re: NUL to terminate strings; was reinventing ASCII?

In article <7zlk4p4lvp.fsf@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
	torbenm@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 (Torben Ægidius Mogensen) writes:
> 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.  

Actually, EOT = end of transmission
          ETX = end of text

But the problem with this approach is it misses the point of ASCII.
American Standard Code for Information Interchange
While ASCII has been usedc for local storage of characters I believe its
intended purpose was for moving them between locations over what were the
common transmission methods of its day.  Thus I think while there is an
ETX it would be meaningless without a preceding STX somewhere in the
string.

>                That seems like a much more appropriate terminating
> character.
> 
>> Of course, there are other ways strings can be defined, even in C,
>> with the right library sup****t.
> 
> Quite.  For manipulating long texts, a linear array of characters is
> not a very good structure anyway -- regardless of whether it is
> terminated by a specific character or the length is specified
> separately.

There used to be a product called SafeC (a long, long time ago).  I wonder
how it handled strings?

bill

-- 
Bill Gunshannon          |  de-moc-ra-cy (di mok' ra see) n.  Three wolves
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