String Length
Although formal strings can have an arbitrary (but finite) length, the length of strings in real languages is often constrained to an artificial maximum. In general, there are two types of string datatypes: fixed-length strings, which have a fixed maximum length and which use the same amount of memory whether this maximum is reached or not, and variable-length strings, whose length is not arbitrarily fixed and which use varying amounts of memory depending on their actual size. Most strings in modern programming languages are variable-length strings. Despite the name, even variable-length strings are limited in length, although, in general, the limit depends only on the amount of memory available. The string length can be stored as a separate integer (which puts a theoretical limit on the length) or implicitly through a termination character, usually a character value with all bits zero. See also "Null-terminated" below.
Read more about this topic: String (computer Science), String Datatypes
Famous quotes containing the words string and/or length:
“A culture may be conceived as a network of beliefs and purposes in which any string in the net pulls and is pulled by the others, thus perpetually changing the configuration of the whole. If the cultural element called morals takes on a new shape, we must ask what other strings have pulled it out of line. It cannot be one solitary string, nor even the strings nearby, for the network is three-dimensional at least.”
—Jacques Barzun (b. 1907)
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—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)