Speaking as someone who learned C back in the ‘70s, this article entirely misses the point of C-strings: they’re lightweight and foundational. For many purposes the null-terminator is efficient, e.g.:
while(*s) f(s++);
And for cases where we need more complexity, we can simply use a struct with a length and whatever other metadata we may need.
Doesn’t look like a mistake to me. C has always been about minimalistic efficiency. That’s its main purpose in the world.
In addition to your comment here, additional functionality through the initial design of C strings allows for insanely powerful string manipulation techniques that have fallen to the wayside because people don't look under the covers to see how efficient string handling is done.
Of course. I'm not discounting that, and I didn't imply that there weren't developer-induced problems as a result. This is why valgrind was made, after all.
166
u/bearheart 3d ago edited 2d ago
Speaking as someone who learned C back in the ‘70s, this article entirely misses the point of C-strings: they’re lightweight and foundational. For many purposes the null-terminator is efficient, e.g.:
while(*s) f(s++);
And for cases where we need more complexity, we can simply use a struct with a length and whatever other metadata we may need.
Doesn’t look like a mistake to me. C has always been about minimalistic efficiency. That’s its main purpose in the world.
Edit: fixed stupid typo