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What is the difference between aq\0aq and \0?

I think the title describes everything, but the story is
I'm re-implementing the bzero function in c, and that's where I encountered this aq\0aq
by some searching I understood that it has the same role as \0(which is a null character to determine the end of a string)
but I'm curious if there's any difference and what is the aq?

Solution

  • what is the aq?

    It's an artifact left by converting groff (man pages, see man 7 groff) to html. It should be just '\0'. See man bzero.

    https://github.com/mkerrisk/man-pages/blob/master/man3/bzero.3#L45

    by writing zeros (bytes containing \(aq\e0\(aq) to that area.