Null-terminated string

In <a href="/facts/Computer_programming/QmSsFnu0">computer programming</a>, a null-terminated string is a <a href="/facts/Character_string/4ChJu5WS">character string</a> stored as an <a href="/facts/Array_data_structure/BKGvF8AM">array</a> containing the characters and terminated with a <a href="/facts/Null_character/IMYNHNxR">null character</a> (a character with an internal value of zero, called "NUL" in this article, not same as the <a href="/facts/Glyph/A7Gesbxj">glyph</a> zero). Alternative names are <a href="/facts/C_string_handling/V0AYCYR2">C string</a>, which refers to the <a href="/facts/C_(programming_language)/Ky2No763">C programming language</a> and ASCIIZ (although C can use encodings other than <a href="/facts/ASCII/vGUI33Qu">ASCII</a>).
The length of a string is found by searching for the (first) NUL. This can be slow as it takes O(n) (<a href="/facts/Linear_time/77T62gmf">linear time</a>) with respect to the string length. It also means that a string cannot contain a NUL (there is a NUL in memory, but it is after the last character, not in the string).

Null-terminated string open-in-new

Null-terminated string