This is the origination of null terminated strings in C: "In BCPL, the first packed byte contains the number of characters in the string; in B, there is no cou

This is the origination of null terminated strings in C: "In BCPL, the first packed byte contains the number of characters in the string; in B, there is no count and strings are terminated by a special character, which B spelled ‘*e’. This change was made partially to avoid the limitation on the length of a string caused by holding the count in an 8- or 9-bit slot, and partly because maintaining the count seemed, in our experience, less convenient than using a terminator. From https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/chist.pdf https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/chist.pdf