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Comment by jessermeyer | Hacker News Reader

Mind to unpack that for me?

Here's how I unpack this: ""[1] is the 0 (termination) byte. The 0 byte is then interpreted as an address -- the nil address.

But what's the use of asking for the address of the null terminator? Where is that stored exactly?

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The "" will define a null terminated char array to represent the string. But as it string contains no text it's a char array that only requires one byte (i.e. it contains nothing but the null termination character).

Now the first character of that char array is found here: ""[0]

The second character is found here: ""[1]

So the address of the second character is found here: &""[1]

But as the string was represented by one byte char array that second address is past the end of the string.

So it's actually an undefined address.

Nit: one past end of an array is actually fine as an address.

Not always. Consider this 'test.cpp' example:

    #include <stdio.h>
    #include <string.h>
    
    struct a_struct {
      char a[1];
      char b[2];
    
      a_struct() {
         strcpy(a, "");
         strcpy(b, "b");
      }
    } x;
    
    int main() {
       printf("before:\n");
       printf("a : '%s'\n", x.a);
       printf("b : '%s'\n", x.b);
    
       char *c = &1[x.a];
       *c = 'c';
    
       printf("after:\n");
       printf("a : '%s'\n", x.a);
       printf("b : '%s'\n", x.b);   //b is now corrupt
    }

Compile and running this code:

    C:\temp>g++ test.cpp
    C:\temp>a.exe
    before:
    a : ''
    b : 'b'
    after:
    a : ''
    b : 'c'

Yes, dereferencing past the end is not fine, but the address itself is.

""[1] is not the termination byte, it's the byte after that.

Its address is taken there with &, which yields a const char*. The (char *) cast is only there to cast away const.

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