C Strings: A 50-Year Design Mistake
rbanffy · hn · 2026-07-16
This article critiques the design of C strings from a historical perspective: treating null-terminated (\0) byte sequences as strings has been a source of engineering costs for decades.
Rather than just complaining, the piece analyzes exactly why this design makes security, boundary handling, API design, and performance optimization so difficult, explaining its lingering impact on a vast amount of low-level software today.
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