http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascii#ASCII_control_code_chart Binary Oct Dec Hex Abbr Unicode Control char C Escape code Name 0000000 000 0 00 NUL ␀ ^@ \0 Null character There’s no difference, but the more idiomatic one is ‘\0’. Putting it down as char c = 0; could mean that you intend to use it as a number (e.g. a counter). … Read more
From Joel’s excellent article on the topic: Remember the way strings work in C: they consist of a bunch of bytes followed by a null character, which has the value 0. This has two obvious implications: There is no way to know where the string ends (that is, the string length) without moving through it, … Read more
Yes you can have embedded nulls in your std::string. Example: std::string s; s.push_back(‘\0’); s.push_back(‘a’); assert(s.length() == 2); Note: std::string‘s c_str() member will always append a null character to the returned char buffer; However, std::string‘s data() member may or may not append a null character to the returned char buffer. Be careful of operator+= One thing … Read more
What are null-terminating strings? In C, a “null-terminated string” is a tautology. A string is, by definition, a contiguous null-terminated sequence of characters (an array, or a part of an array). Other languages may address strings differently. I am only discussing C strings. How are they different from a non-null-terminated strings? There are no non-null-terminated … Read more
The title of your question references C strings. C++ std::string objects are handled differently than standard C strings. \0 is important when using C strings, and when I use the term string in this answer, I’m referring to standard C strings. \0 acts as a string terminator in C. It is known as the null … Read more
From the horse’s mouth None of BCPL, B, or C supports character data strongly in the language; each treats strings much like vectors of integers and supplements general rules by a few conventions. In both BCPL and B a string literal denotes the address of a static area initialized with the characters of the string, … Read more
Yes. Per the C++0x FDIS 21.4.7.1/1, std::basic_string::c_str() must return a pointer p such that p + i == &operator[](i) for each i in [0,size()]. This means that given a string s, the pointer returned by s.c_str() must be the same as the address of the initial character in the string (&s[0]).
A “string” is really just an array of chars; a null-terminated string is one where a null character ‘\0’ marks the end of the string (not necessarily the end of the array). All strings in code (delimited by double quotes “”) are automatically null-terminated by the compiler. So for example, “hi” is the same as … Read more