Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site brl-tgr.ARPA Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!mit-eddie!godot!harvard!seismo!brl-tgr!tgr!gwyn@Brl-Vld.ARPA 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.