If string arrays are null terminated in C, why are arrays of other data types not null terminated?

Question

Strings, or arrays of characters in C must be null terminated to know where they end. Why does the same rule not apply to arrays of other types? eg. How does the computer kn

Answer 1

Arrays of characters do not have to be nul-terminated.

char foo[3]="foo"; //not nul-terminated
char bar[]={'b','a','r'}; //not nul-terminated

It's just that string literals are nul-terminated arrays, and that C makes it really easy to make nul-terminated arrays by using string literals as initializers:

 char baz[]="baz"; //nul-terminated because "baz" is

Why C does so is a choice the designer(s) made because using a terminator seemed more convenient to them than maintaining character counts next the character array.

But nothing in C forces this preference on you.