Use of null character in strings (C++)

I am brushing up on my C++ and stumbled across a curious behavior in regards to strings, character arrays, and the null character ('\0'). The following code:

#include <iostream>
using namespace std;

int main() {
    cout << "hello\0there"[6] << endl;

    char word [] = "hello\0there";
    cout << word[6] << endl;

    string word2 = "hello\0there";
    cout << word2[6] << endl;

    return 0;
}

produces the output:

> t
> t
>

What is going on behind the scenes? Why does the string literal and the declared char array store the 't' at index 6 (after the internal '\0'), but the declared string does not?

Use of null character in strings (C++)

4 Answers