One anecdote is from this discussion[1] on Usenet in 1989.

Dennis Ritchie wrote:

    The question arose: why does C use a terminating character
    for strings instead of a count?

    Discussion of the representation of strings in C is not
    fruitful unless it is realized that there are no strings in
    C. There are character arrays, which serve a similar purpose,
    but no strings.

    Things very deep in the design of the language, and in the
    customs of its use, make strings a mess to add. The intent
    was that the behavior of character arrays should be exactly
    like that of other arrays, and the hope was that stringish
    operations on these character arrays should be convenient
    enough. …

    Given the explicit use of character arrays, and explicit
    pointers to sequences of characters, the conventional use of
    a terminating marker is hard to avoid. The history of this
    convention and of the general array scheme had little to do
    with the PDP-11; it was inherited from BCPL and B.

Robert Firth replied:

    A correction here: the C scheme was NOT inherited from BCPL.
    BCPL strings are not confused with character arrays; their
    implemetation is not normally visible to the programmer, and
    their semantics are respectably robust.

Eric S Raymond replied to Firth:

    I’ve seen bonehead idiocy on the net before, but this tops it
    all — this takes the cut-glass flyswatter. Mr. Firth, do you
    read what you’re replying to before you pontificate? Didn’t
    the name ‘Dennis Ritchie’ register in whatever soggy lump of
    excrement you’re using as a central nervous system? Do you
    realize that the person you just incorrectly ‘corrected’ on a
    point of C’s intellectual antecedents is the inventor of C
    himself!?!

    Sheesh. No wonder Dennis doesn’t post more often.

    Next time dmr posts something, I suggest you shut up and
    listen. Respectfully.

While Dennis Ritchie also replied to Firth:

    Robert Firth justifiably corrects my misstatement about BCPL
    strings; they were indeed counted. I evidently edited my
    memory.


[1] https://groups.google.com/forum/?nomobile=true#!topic/comp.arch/GUA7AtDPy84


Posted by Vidit Tiwari
https://www.quora.com/Can-anyone-share-an-interesting-fact-about-Dennis-Ritchie?share=1