curl_easy_strerror man page zero terminated

[coinhubs]

I did this

https://curl.haxx.se/libcurl/c/curl_easy_strerror.html

This page says "zero terminated string"

I expected the following

"NUL terminated string"

There may be other parts of the manual that could be updated in a similar way.

curl/libcurl version

[curl -V output]

operating system

[coinhubs]

A few more same that could be updated as well
https://curl.haxx.se/libcurl/c/curl_share_strerror.html
https://curl.haxx.se/libcurl/c/curl_multi_strerror.html

[bagder]

I usually go with "zero" in text instead of "nul" only because "nul" is too close to "null" and they're pronounced the same way and it certainly isn't NULL terminated...

[coinhubs]

I usually go with "zero" in text instead of "nul" only because "nul" is too close to "null" and they're pronounced the same way and it certainly isn't NULL terminated...

Fair enough. I think there are lots of different opinions, although not seen 'zero' before. BSD generally call it 'NUL'. ASCII and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO/IEC_646 call it NUL

POSIX strcpy()
http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/functions/strcpy.html

glibc:
https://www.gnu.org/software/libc/manual/html_node/Converting-Strings.html

The C and C++ standards don't use "zero".

I had a look at the linux man pages, they're consistently describing as "including the terminating null byte ('\0')"

https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man3/strcpy.3.html

Cheers

[bagder]

My strcpy man page on Debian even uses the phrase "null-terminated".

"man ascii" describes the character as NUL '\0' (null character)

[bagder]

I put up a very unscientific poll on twitter about it:

https://twitter.com/bagder/status/1276074546530000896

[coinhubs]

Hi! null-terminated is the in common use. Personally I use NUL terminated, as it's clear it's not a NULL ptr, although C++ now has the nullptr keyword.

I looked online quite a few in favour of NUL

https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Warning-Options.html
GCC uses NUL "-Wno-format-contains-nul
If -Wformat is specified, do not warn about format strings that contain NUL bytes."

http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man7/bpf-helpers.7.html

int bpf_probe_read_str(void *dst, int size, const void *unsafe_ptr)

          Description
                 Copy a NUL terminated string

POSIX uses NUL
http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man3/strncpy.3p.html
" If a NUL character is written to the destination, the stpncpy()
function shall return the address of the first such NUL character."

http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man3/strchr.3.html

strchrnul()
It's even called NUL in the function name

C11 Annex K uses NUL
http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg14/www/docs/n1969.htm

[bagder]

If we are going to change this phrase, we should go with the common, most preferred one, or not change it at all. Then it is really not a question of which our own personal preferences are...

[bagder]

Also, the question is not what the character or byte is called. The question is how to say zero terminated the most common/standard way.

[jzakrzewski]

Right. The funny thing is I typically only hear the phrase "null-terminated", so no idea how people would write it. I don't recall ever hearing "zero-terminated" (in context of strings) even though it's perfectly understandable.
As a side note: in C++ this is simply called a "c-string" :)

[coinhubs]

C++ ISO/IEC
14882 uses "null-terminated"

C ISO/IEC
9899 uses "null character"

"7.1.1 Definitions of terms
1 A string is a contiguous sequence of characters terminated by and including the first null
character. The term multibyte string is sometimes used instead to emphasize special
processing given to multibyte characters contained in the string or to avoid confusion
with a wide string. A pointer to a string is a pointer to its initial (lowest addressed)
character. The length of a string is the number of bytes preceding the null character and
the value of a string is the sequence of the values of the contained characters, in order."

[jzakrzewski]

C++ ISO/IEC
14882 uses "null-terminated"

I meant "cstring" is used in commonly by C++ programmers (most probably because it's short ;) ).
In any case "null-terminated" seems to be the most common of calling it, so #5608 is the way to go.

[bagder]

uses "null character

Finish this sentence: "A C string is a sequence of bytes that is..."

1. "null-terminated"
2. "null character"

I'm not a native English speaker but I know we can't use (2)...