Comment by skitter
2 years ago
As the top level comment was about knowing the length of a string: GTA Online's loading times were atrocious because of a null-terminated string.
2 years ago
As the top level comment was about knowing the length of a string: GTA Online's loading times were atrocious because of a null-terminated string.
Not really, more that the implementation of sscanf() is stupid and calls strlen() even though implementing sscanf() that doesn't require that is perfectly possible.
Instead of putting up with people constantly complaining how C is bad because of zero-terminated strings, we should better educate folks that there is absolutely zero reason why one has to rely on a NUL byte in-band signal. And APIs like sscanf() shouldn't be used beyond their historic purposes and there are easier ways to program.
C doesn't really "have" zero-terminated strings other than supporting them with string literals as well as having an atrocious "strings" library for historical reasons. C has storage and gives you the means to copy data around, that's it.
(Although I fully agree that the GTA issue can be seen as a bug in the implementation of sscanf()).