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[bug-gnulib] Re: null vs. `NUL byte'


From: Paul Eggert
Subject: [bug-gnulib] Re: null vs. `NUL byte'
Date: Sat, 26 Mar 2005 20:49:48 -0800
User-agent: Gnus/5.1006 (Gnus v5.10.6) Emacs/21.4 (gnu/linux)

Jim Meyering <address@hidden> writes:

> isn't `NUL byte' unambiguous?

Yes, but it's nonstandard.  POSIX defines

  NUL: A character with all bits set to zero.
  null byte: A byte with all bits set to zero.

and it would be better not to mix the two notions, for the sake of
environments where byte != character.  (Admittedly coreutils doesn't
always do this now....)

I don't see the need to sweep through code and comments looking for
all instances of the phrase "null-terminated" and replacing it with
"null-byte-terminated" or whatever.  It's normally clear from the
context whether the phrase is talking about null bytes, null pointers
or whatever.

> what about uses of NUL-terminate?

That would be standard in contexts where we are talking about
sequences of characters (not bytes or pointers or etc.).  My guess is
that this is relatively rare.

>> I suspect the existing comments sometimes say "null character" when
>> they should say "null byte".
>
> Or maybe just "'\0'"?
> or `zero byte'.

"zero byte" might confuse people into thinking it's '0'.  I suppose
you could talk me into "'\0'" but it's not a huge win over "null byte".

Not really a big deal either way I suppose.




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