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The Most Expensive One-Byte Mistake

An anonymous reader writes "Poul-Henning Kamp looks back at some of the bad decisions made in language design, specifically the C/Unix/Posix use of NUL-terminated text strings. 'The choice was really simple: Should the C language represent strings as an address + length tuple or just as the address with a magic character (NUL) marking the end? ... Using an address + length format would cost one more byte of overhead than an address + magic_marker format, and their PDP computer had limited core memory. In other words, this could have been a perfectly typical and rational IT or CS decision, like the many similar decisions we all make every day; but this one had quite atypical economic consequences.'"

4 of 594 comments (clear)

  1. Whatever by Old+Wolf · · Score: 4, Funny

    Come on , this is complete rubbish___8^)_#;3,2,.3root>^$)(^(943hellomax0984)_))1..l2l2_}[[}{

  2. Re:The Road Not Taken by billstewart · · Score: 4, Funny

    Yes, you got the author right. The trick is that in the 1920 edition, he's taking the other road...

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    Bill Stewart
    New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
  3. Re:The Road Not Taken by other Slashdot FPers by o'reor · · Score: 5, Funny

    I for one welcome that refreshing new way of writing "Frost's pissed."

    --
    In Soviet Russia, our new overlords are belong to all your base.
  4. Re:The Road Not Taken by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Clearly the poem was originally two different poems written by two difference people: call them person 'H' for 'honest' and person 'C' for 'cynic'. At some later date, the 'H' text and the 'C' text were merged, with modifications, by scribes. In truth, we can't be sure whether the person traditionally held to be the author, Frost, was 'H' or 'C', or whether he, in fact, wrote any part of the text at all.