Are strings NUL-terminated?
Cyclone follows C’s lead on this. String literals like “foo” are NUL-terminated. Many of the library functions consider a NUL character to mark the end of a string. And library functions that return strings often ensure that they are NUL terminated. However, there is no guarantee that a string is NUL terminated. For one thing, as in C, the terminating NUL may be overwritten by any character. In C this can be exploited to cause buffer overflows. To avoid this in Cyclone, strings generally have type char ?, that is, they carry bounds information. In Cyclone a string ends when a NUL character is found, or when the bounds are exceeded.
Cyclone follows C’s lead on this. String literals like “foo” are NUL-terminated. Many of the library functions consider a NUL character to mark the end of a string. And library functions that return strings often ensure that they are NUL terminated. However, there is no guarantee that a string is NUL terminated. For one thing, as in C, the terminating NUL may be overwritten by any character. In C this can be exploited to cause buffer overflows. To avoid this in Cyclone, strings generally have type char ?, that is, they carry bounds information. In Cyclone a string ends when a NUL character is found, or when the bounds are exceeded.
