Question

I’m trying to translate a huge project from C++ to Delphi and I’m finalizing the translation. One of the things I left is the ‘\0’ monster.

if (*asmcmd=='\0' || *asmcmd==';')

where asmcmd is char*.

I know that \0 marks the end of array type in C++, but I need to know it as a byte. Is it 0?

In other words, would the code below be the equivalent of the C++ line?

if(asmcmd^=0) or (asmcmd^=';') then ...

where asmcmd is PAnsiChar.

You need not know Delphi to answer my question, but tell me \0 as byte. That would work also. 🙂

Answer 1

'\0' equals 0. It’s a relic from C, which doesn’t have any string type at all and uses char arrays instead. The null character is used to mark the end of a string; not a very wise decision in retrospect – most other string implementations use a dedicated counter variable somewhere, which makes finding the end of a string O(1) instead of C’s O(n).

*asmcmd=='\0' is just a convoluted way of checking length(asmcmd) == 0 or asmcmd.is_empty() in a hypothetical language.