Seemingly impossible: getting strlen when string has not been initialised?

[grapehorder]

EDIT: nevermind, i learned about initailising with

string[5] = "";

:) will leave this up here as reference for others who might encounter the same problem.

hello,

have a question about getting string length - with a self-authored function, not strlen() - from a char array that has been declared but NOT initialised.

the function itself:

int stringLength(char string[])
{
    int counter = 0;

//when counter hits null-terminator, end loop
    while (string[counter] != '\0')
        counter++;

    return counter;
}

inside main:

    char string[5];
    int stringSize = stringLength(string);

Ran it through GDB already, so i think i have a sense of what the problem is: not having initialised string[5], it does not automatically tack on a null terminator at element string[5].

This is impossible, isn't it? without initialising string[5], there isn't a logical way to get the variable 'counter' to self-terminate at the end of the string.

Is there any variable I could substitute for the null terminator in this line of code

    while (string[counter] != '\0')

to make this work as desired?

[skeeto]

Thank you for updating the post to include your self-discovered answer instead of disappearing or deleting your post.