Original sentence: For example "data processing" machines like the IBM 1401 used a special word mark bit to delimit strings at the left, where the operation would start at the right.It is also possible to optimize the string represented using techniques from run length encoding (replacing repeated characters by the character value and a length) and Hamming encoding.It is possible to create data structures and functions that manipulate them that do not have the problems associated with character termination and can in principle overcome length code bounds
Edited sentence: An object-oriented representation of a string class easily overcomes the problems of character termination and can in principle overcome length code bounds (at the expense, however, of representing strings whose length is "unknown").C is the only modern platform in which a character in good standing is forced to serve guard duty and as a whole, the collective wisdom seems to prefer length codes.For example, prior to 1964, designers in IBM believed they could segment the computer marketplace of the time into "scientific" computing, with primarily numerical computation using binary fixed and floating point arithment, and "business data processing", with the need to do decimal fixed-point (but varying length) arithmetic and short data strings.For this reason, "data processing" machines like the IBM 1401 used a special word mark bit to delimit strings at the left, where the operation would start at the right.However, it was a simple matter even at this time to develop software to represent "long" strings as arrays of system strings, whereas C's workaround is its distinction between str* and mem* functions, a major design flaw from the standpoint of orthogonality to some.Object-oriented representations can also hide details of how strings are encoded, such as the number of bits per character.Object-oriented string classes can also optimize the string represented using techniques from run length encoding (replacing repeated characters by the character value and a length) and Hamming encoding.Of course, actual OO representations limit strings to the maximum size of a standard or long integer in practice.These had a bad reputation around the time of C's birth, because programmers had discovered that the limitation of the length to byte precision (0..255) was problematic