Why do strings in C need to be null terminated?

Question

Just wondering why this is the case. I\'m eager to know more about low level languages, and I\'m only into the basics of C and this is already confusing me.

Do langu

Answer 1

They need to be null terminated so you know how long they are. And yes, they are simply arrays of char.

Higher level languages like PHP may choose to hide the null termination from you or not use it at all - they may maintain a length, for example. C doesn't do it that way because of the overhead involved. High level languages may also not implement strings as an array of char - they could (and some do) implement them as lists of arrays of char, for example.