this post was submitted on 29 Feb 2024
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In the ASCII character encoding, the hexadecimal number 61 is the letter 'a'. (Yes, it is lowercase.) 0x is just a notation that indicates a number is in hexadecimal, as opposed to decimal or binary.
Therefore, 0x6161616161616161 translates to the string "aaaaaaaa" (without the quotes or a null terminator).
Its worth noting the null terminator is part of the string's encoding rather than being part of the string itself, so the lack of a null terminator is more of an implementation detail. Kind of like describing a pointer as "not a fat pointer".