Re: terminology: zero character vs. null character

Re: terminology: zero character vs. null character

[Gerald Pfeifer]

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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

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>

Re: terminology: zero character vs. null character

[Joseph Myers]

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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.

-- 
Joseph S. Myers
joseph@codesourcery.com

Re: terminology: zero character vs. null character

[Gerald Pfeifer]

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

Re: terminology: zero character vs. null character

[Bruce Korb]

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.

Re: terminology: zero character vs. null character

[Martin Sebor]

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