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Comment by qsort | Hacker News Reader

I think the C example is meaningfully different. \0 in C is a string terminator. There is no more string after it, so you can just read the string "while (c != 0)", and there is never any need to escape it, because by definition strings cannot contain that character.

From a purely linguistic standpoint, the choice is sound. Obviously it's objectively a disaster but for unrelated reasons.

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> the C example ... by definition strings cannot contain that character

They can, only some functions stop at the first zero:

    char s[] = "gogo\x00gogo";
    printf( "%d\n", (int)sizeof( s ) );

sizeof s (fun fact: you can omit the parentheses because it's not a function, it's an operator) reports the size of the array s, which is a variable of automatic storage duration.

Consider the following program:

  #include <stdio.h>
  #include <string.h>

  int main()
  {
      const char * const s = "gogo\x00gogo";
      const char t[] = "gogo\x00gogo";
      printf("%d,%d,%d,%d\n", 
          (int)sizeof s, 
          (int)strlen(s), // DO NOT EVER USE THIS FUNCTION
                          // YOU WILL BE FIRED IF YOU DO
          (int)sizeof t,
          (int)strlen(t)  // DO NOT EVER USE THIS FUNCTION
                          // YOU WILL BE FIRED IF YOU DO
      );
  }

  > 8,4,10,4

> > the C example ... by definition strings cannot contain that character

> They can, only some functions stop at the first zero:

> char s[] = "gogo\x00gogo";

And in what human language is that `\x00` a valid character? What rune/glyph/symbol represents it?

Nothing, you say? Well, looks like a good choice to me.

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