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.'"

Comments

Whatever

[Old Wolf]

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

Re:The Road Not Taken

[billstewart]

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

Re:The Road Not Taken by other Slashdot FPers

[o'reor]

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