Why does System.out.println() terminate at ASCII Code zero

Question

Try this piece of code -

public class WhitespaceTest
{
    public static void main(String[] args)
    {
        int x = 0;
        char c = (char) x;
        System.out.println("c-->"+c+"<---this doesn't print?");
    }
}

The output is -

c-->

Why does System.out.println() terminate at ASCII code zero?

I tried this in JCreator LE under Windows 7.

Answer 1

It depends on what your console does (or whatever else is handling System.out). System.out will propagate all the information just fine, and if your console attaches no particular meaning to U+0000 then all will be well. However, many UI controls will treat that as a terminating character. This isn't Java's "fault" - it's the UI control itself.

(Just for reference, running that code within a Windows command prompt on Windows 7 is fine for me.)

Answer 2

In C/C++ style strings the end of the string is determined by the location of the terminating null-character (the character with value 0, like in your case). Most likely the System.out.println() call passes the string to the OS verbatim, which thinks the string ended at the null-character, and only prints up to that point