jc I would assume is primariy the graphics, 3d organization and perhaps physics code. he doesn't spend his time writing every sub piece of the engine that deals with strings. thats what they employ the lackies for. and yes, non null terminating a string can work in some cases where the max length of the string is known and you query its data using that length as the max to ever read. it can even work with strcpy() in some situations, as well, it will work if you write a longer string into it than it can handle and you've now corrupted the memmory of another item etc.