Editing String (computer science) (section)

=== String length ===
Although formal strings can have an arbitrary 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 to be determined at [[compile time]] and which use the same amount of memory whether this maximum is needed or not, and ''variable-length strings'', whose length is not arbitrarily fixed and which can use varying amounts of memory depending on the actual requirements at run time (see [[Memory management]]). Most strings in modern [[programming languages]] are variable-length strings. Of course, even variable-length strings are limited in length by the amount of available memory. The string length can be stored as a separate integer (which may put another artificial limit on the length) or implicitly through a termination character, usually a character value with all bits zero such as in C programming language. See also "[[#Null-terminated|Null-terminated]]" below.