(Too) Much Ado About Nothing (Re: Shared libraries are not necessary)

Geoff Lane zzassgl at uts.mcc.ac.uk
Tue Jun 11 22:50:31 AEST 1991


In article <426 at n4hgf.Mt-Park.GA.US> wht at n4hgf.Mt-Park.GA.US (Warren Tucker) writes:
>I propose the next marathon twisted-fest begin with a discussion
>of changing the traditional null string terminatopr to 255.  
>That should spark some really enriching discussion and delicious
>back biting about nothing. :-)


Arrrrrhhhhhhhhh......... NO NO NO.  What you REALLY should do is
prefix all strings with an expicit length.  Look at the
advantages - no more scanning down the bytes looking for the end - no
more having to rewrite all the string handling routines because your
particular project *must* have strings with embedded null bytes - no
more forgetting about that final invisible byte and overwriting something
vital.

By the way, is this a 5 minute argument or a 10 minute argument?
-- 
Geoff. Lane.                                  Janet: zzassgl at uk.ac.mcc.cms
UTS Sys Admin, Manchester Computing Centre, Oxford Rd, Manchester, M13 9PL



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