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terminology: zero character vs. null character

Message ID alpine.LSU.2.20.1703122226570.3498@anthias.pfeifer.com
State New
Headers show

Commit Message

Gerald Pfeifer March 12, 2017, 9:28 p.m. UTC
On Fri, 10 Mar 2017, Manuel López-Ibáñez wrote:
>> I am currently translating GCC into German. During that, I noticed that
>> in some places the term "zero character" means '\0'. The official term
>> though is "null character", as per the C standard.
> I don't see anything explicit here: https://gcc.gnu.org/codingconventions.html
> But I believe we follow standards' language and it should always be "null
> character".

Agreed.

Joseph, do you also agree (and with the patch below to document this)?

Gerald

Comments

Joseph Myers March 13, 2017, 6:15 p.m. UTC | #1
On Sun, 12 Mar 2017, Gerald Pfeifer wrote:

> On Fri, 10 Mar 2017, Manuel López-Ibáñez wrote:
> >> I am currently translating GCC into German. During that, I noticed that
> >> in some places the term "zero character" means '\0'. The official term
> >> though is "null character", as per the C standard.
> > I don't see anything explicit here: https://gcc.gnu.org/codingconventions.html
> > But I believe we follow standards' language and it should always be "null
> > character".
> 
> Agreed.
> 
> Joseph, do you also agree (and with the patch below to document this)?

Yes.
Gerald Pfeifer March 13, 2017, 10:02 p.m. UTC | #2
On Mon, 13 Mar 2017, Joseph Myers wrote:
>>>> I am currently translating GCC into German. During that, I noticed that
>>>> in some places the term "zero character" means '\0'. The official term
>>>> though is "null character", as per the C standard.
>> Joseph, do you also agree (and with the patch below to document this)?
> Yes.

Cool; I committed the change to codingconventions.html .

Roland (and Manuel), that means you can now proceed according to
Manuel's recommendation.

Gerald
Bruce Korb March 13, 2017, 10:34 p.m. UTC | #3
On 03/13/17 15:02, Gerald Pfeifer wrote:
> On Mon, 13 Mar 2017, Joseph Myers wrote:
>>>>> I am currently translating GCC into German. During that, I noticed that
>>>>> in some places the term "zero character" means '\0'. The official term
>>>>> though is "null character", as per the C standard.
>>> Joseph, do you also agree (and with the patch below to document this)?
>> Yes.
> 
> Cool; I committed the change to codingconventions.html .

I'm likely late to the party, but what's wrong with the traditional
"NUL"?  Googling "NUL vs. NULL" yields up:

NULL is a macro defined in <stddef.h> for the null pointer. NUL is the
name of the first character in the ASCII character set. It corresponds
to a zero value. There s no standard macro NUL in C, but some people
like to define it.
Martin Sebor March 14, 2017, 4:58 p.m. UTC | #4
On 03/13/2017 04:34 PM, Bruce Korb wrote:
> On 03/13/17 15:02, Gerald Pfeifer wrote:
>> On Mon, 13 Mar 2017, Joseph Myers wrote:
>>>>>> I am currently translating GCC into German. During that, I noticed that
>>>>>> in some places the term "zero character" means '\0'. The official term
>>>>>> though is "null character", as per the C standard.
>>>> Joseph, do you also agree (and with the patch below to document this)?
>>> Yes.
>>
>> Cool; I committed the change to codingconventions.html .
>
> I'm likely late to the party, but what's wrong with the traditional
> "NUL"?  Googling "NUL vs. NULL" yields up:
>
> NULL is a macro defined in <stddef.h> for the null pointer. NUL is the
> name of the first character in the ASCII character set. It corresponds
> to a zero value. There s no standard macro NUL in C, but some people
> like to define it.

Personally, I think the term "NUL character" is fine.  It's
the abbreviation for the null character in both ASCII and EBCDIC,
and it's used widely by POSIX, and interchangeably with the "null
character."  The C and C++ standards use the term "null character"
exclusively, so if the GCC documentation should adopt one of them
for consistency, it makes sense to go with "null."

Martin
diff mbox

Patch

Index: codingconventions.html
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvs/gcc/wwwdocs/htdocs/codingconventions.html,v
retrieving revision 1.79
diff -u -r1.79 codingconventions.html
--- codingconventions.html	1 Mar 2017 12:53:57 -0000	1.79
+++ codingconventions.html	12 Mar 2017 21:26:56 -0000
@@ -439,6 +439,11 @@ 
     <td></td>
   </tr>
   <tr>
+    <td>"null character"</td>
+    <td>"zero character"</td>
+    <td></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
     <td>"Objective-C"</td>
     <td>"Objective C"</td>
   </tr>