NUL-terminated strings aren't
that bad:
* unlike Pascal-style strings, they can be usefully sliced, especially if you can modify them strtok-style.
* unlike (ptr,len) "Modern C buffers"/Rust-style strings, references to them are pointer-sized, and they can be used as a serialization format.
This makes the kind of application that is based on cutting pieces of a string and passing them around a good measure faster, especially compared to say C++'s "atomically reference-counted, re-allocating at the slightest touch" std::string.
This style of programming is not particularly popular nowadays, so buffer-strings are better-fitting. Its main problem is its multitude of edge-cases, which tend to demonstrate C's "every bug is exploitable" problem well.
* unlike Pascal-style strings, they can be usefully sliced, especially if you can modify them strtok-style.
* unlike (ptr,len) "Modern C buffers"/Rust-style strings, references to them are pointer-sized, and they can be used as a serialization format.
This makes the kind of application that is based on cutting pieces of a string and passing them around a good measure faster, especially compared to say C++'s "atomically reference-counted, re-allocating at the slightest touch" std::string.
This style of programming is not particularly popular nowadays, so buffer-strings are better-fitting. Its main problem is its multitude of edge-cases, which tend to demonstrate C's "every bug is exploitable" problem well.