null terminating a string

Hello,

I am wondering if I declare a array of chars like this.

Code:

static char xml_buffer[1024];

I am clearing the array before I fill it by using one of the following. By setting the first char to zero:

Code:

xml_buffer[0] = 0;

or is this preferred?

Code:

memset(xml_buffer, 0, sizeof(xml_buffer));

However, the problem is when I fill the buffer I don't think the null is being inserted at the end of the string.

I am using a xml parser that will fill the buffer.

Code:

success = xmlFillString(tree, xml_buffer, sizeof(xml_buffer), XML_NO_CALLBACK);

I don't think the null is being automatically appended and the documentation doesn't specify either? Could be I am not clearing the buffer, or is there any way to do this manually?

Many thanks,

You could always cast strlen(xml_buffer) and see how far your string actually reaches. If you are getting a lot of extra stuff, the data is probably not being null terminated.

Do you have any documentation on xmlFillString? How does it work?

I have some documentation. But doesn't specify about null terminating.

I guess this is something I have to do myself.

Well, would you mind posting it? Does it return how many bytes were written or anything? If that is the case then you can check the last byte or the very next one to see if it is null, and if not, you can set it yourself.

If you want, you could write your own version of this function and use strcpy, which does append a null byte at the end.

Well having done the memset, try

Code:

success = xmlFillString(tree, xml_buffer, sizeof(xml_buffer)-1, XML_NO_CALLBACK);

Instead of using memset, another way to set all the bytes to 0 is like this:

Code:

static char xml_buffer[1024] = {0};