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.
