Talk:Empty string

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This could benefit from attention by an expert in theoretical computer science. Since I'm not even close to that, I'll just make it a bit more readable. Charlie.liban (talk) 17:50, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Added a bit explaining the difference between null and "", though I couldn't find a concise way of explaining the difference. Modifications welcome! And I'm supposed to be a computer scientist ... 199.43.13.100 (talk) 14:20, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Empty strings exist as an additive identity element, both in formal language theory (at least the theory that I took!) and in programming languages. They're just another string, but they happen to have interesting properties - much like 0 for algebra. I guess the confusion comes from the empty part: empty sets (which might be referred to as null sets) have zero elements; empty strings (confusingly called null strings) have zero symbols. On top of this, there are a whole slew of slightly different concepts related to null.

charlie liban (talk) 20:05, 8 July 2008 (UTC)