Null-terminated Unicode strings in java.io on Windows

[Roman Kennke]

Hi,

I'm trying to understand a piece of code in java.io . Let me try to
explain:

When you look into WinNTFileSystem.c in the method
getBooleanAttributes(), you see that the file object is converted to a
WCHAR* using fileToNTPath(). In io_util.c, fileToNTPath(), the filename
string is extracted from the File object, and passed to pathToNTPath().

This is where it gets interesting. The pathToNTPath() function first
converts the string into a jchar* using the macro WITH_UNICODE_STRING.
This macro uses GetStringChars() to do this conversion. Now this is
where I'm lost. Java strings are not null-terminated, and neither are
the jchar* returned by GetStringChars() (which is in itself a long
discussed problem in the JNI spec, but that's another story). But back
in pathToNTPath() this jchar* is treated just like a null-terminated
string, for example, we call wcslen() to determine its length, which
relies on the string beeing null-terminated. Now I assume that this
works somehow, and I only see the following options:
1. There's something in this picture that I don't see. Maybe the string
ends up null-terminated somehow?
2. Maybe this works by accident because Hotspot terminates strings with
a null internally?
3. Or this is a serious bug, that for some reason doesn't bomb all the
time. After all, it _does_ bomb in the JamaicaVM, where I'm trying to
port the code to...

Any ideas? I'd be happy to get an explanation for this problem.

Cheers, Roman

-- 
Dipl.-Inform. (FH) Roman Kennke, Software Engineer, http://kennke.org
aicas Allerton Interworks Computer Automated Systems GmbH
Haid-und-Neu-Straße 18 * D-76131 Karlsruhe * Germany
http://www.aicas.com   * Tel: +49-721-663 968-0
USt-Id: DE216375633, Handelsregister HRB 109481, AG Karlsruhe
Geschäftsführer: Dr. James J. Hunt