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From: Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) 
Newsgroups: net.lang.c
Subject: Re:  C declarations
Message-ID: <8170@brl-tgr.ARPA>
Date: Sat, 9-Feb-85 19:00:06 EST
Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.8170
Posted: Sat Feb  9 19:00:06 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 11-Feb-85 05:37:30 EST
Sender: news@brl-tgr.ARPA
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab
Lines: 7

There is an established C and UNIX convention that character strings
are NUL-terminated (the alternative is to keep a length count with
every string).  General char[] arrays do not necessarily have to
follow this convention.  There are str*() routines for manipulating
NUL-terminated strings and mem*() routines for handling general
char[] arrays.  This is not really an accident, since what is nice
for one usage is not so nice for the other and vice-versa.