Document that a NUL byte in the input is treated as end of input (#5534)

* docs: document that a NUL byte in the input is treated as end of input

A NUL byte anywhere in the input - trailing, or embedded ahead of more
otherwise well-formed JSON - is currently treated the same as genuine
end of input, so parsing silently stops there instead of raising the
parse_error.101 any other unexpected byte triggers. This mirrors the
NUL-terminated-C-string convention already used when no explicit input
length is given (json::parse(const char*) already stops at strlen()),
just applied uniformly rather than only when a length is genuinely
unavailable.

This behavior predates this change and is not being altered here -
changing it would be an observable, backwards-incompatible behavior
change for any caller that (knowingly or not) depends on it, which is
not something to do silently in a patch. Documenting the current,
verified behavior as a new FAQ entry instead, so it's an intentional
and discoverable part of the contract rather than a surprise.

Fixes #5530.

Signed-off-by: Niels Lohmann <niels.lohmann@gmail.com>
Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01N4RQ1Ahan5YAGbnAQGjZTY

* Add JSON_STRICT_NUL_HANDLING opt-in macro for issue #5530

A NUL byte anywhere in the input is currently treated the same as real
end of input, rather than raising parse_error.101 like any other
unexpected byte (documented in the previous commit's FAQ entry). A full
unconditional fix was tried in PR #5532 but rejected as too risky to
ship by default: any caller could depend on the current behavior, even
unknowingly (e.g. a zero-padded buffer). On PR #5534, gregmarr proposed
a compile-time opt-in flag instead, and the maintainer agreed, wanting
it available now and defaulting to the corrected behavior in 4.0.0.

This mirrors the existing JSON_BRACE_INIT_COPY_SEMANTICS precedent as
closely as sensible:
- JSON_STRICT_NUL_HANDLING defaults to 0 (off); the three lexer sites
  that treat '\0' as EOF/comment-terminator are gated with
  `#if !JSON_STRICT_NUL_HANDLING` so the default-off behavior is
  byte-for-byte identical to today's.
- input_adapters.hpp's `T (&array)[N]` overload additionally trims a
  single trailing '\0' from a `char` array (e.g. a string literal like
  `json::parse("123")`) when the macro is on, so that case keeps
  working; every other element type (unsigned char, std::uint8_t, ...)
  always keeps its full extent. This intentionally does *not* reuse the
  existing strlen()-based pointer overload via SFINAE-excluding `char`
  from the array overload, as originally sketched for this change: that
  approach is ambiguous against the newer generic container overload
  added since PR #5532, and even where it compiles, strlen()-scanning a
  `char` array that is not NUL-terminated within its bounds reads past
  the end of the array (confirmed with AddressSanitizer). Trimming only
  a single trailing byte, without scanning, avoids both problems.
- Documented via docs/mkdocs/docs/api/macros/json_strict_nul_handling.md,
  linked from the macros index/nav/features page, the FAQ entry, and
  the parse/accept/operator>> reference pages.
- Tested in unit-class_parser.cpp and unit-deserialization.cpp, default
  state unguarded and opt-in state guarded. Since the library itself
  #undefs the macro at the end of json.hpp (as JSON_BRACE_INIT_COPY_SEMANTICS
  already does), a plain `#if defined(JSON_STRICT_NUL_HANDLING)` guard
  after the include never actually triggers; the tests instead capture
  the command-line value into a test-local macro before including the
  header. A few pre-existing fixtures elsewhere (std::array<uint8_t, N>
  sized one larger than their literal, relying on value-initialization
  to silently add a trailing zero byte) needed the same one-byte
  adjustment to keep passing under the opt-in behavior.

Unlike the precedent, this adds a proper `JSON_StrictNulHandling` CMake
option (rather than a raw -DCMAKE_CXX_FLAGS injection) and wires its
ci_test_strict_nul_handling target into the ci_cmake_options job matrix
in .github/workflows/ubuntu.yml, so the opt-in build is actually
exercised in CI -- closing the one gap in the precedent's own CI setup
(ci_test_brace_init_copy_semantics is defined but never referenced by
any workflow, so it has never actually run).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Signed-off-by: Niels Lohmann <mail@nlohmann.me>

* Clarify where JSON_STRICT_NUL_HANDLING does not reject NUL bytes

Signed-off-by: Niels Lohmann <mail@nlohmann.me>

---------

Signed-off-by: Niels Lohmann <niels.lohmann@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Niels Lohmann <mail@nlohmann.me>
Co-authored-by: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

docs/mkdocs/docs/api/basic_json/accept.md

@@ -90,6 +90,10 @@ Linear in the length of the input. The parser is a predictive LL(1) parser.
 
 A UTF-8 byte order mark is silently ignored.
 
+By default, a `'\0'` (NUL) byte anywhere in the input is treated as end of input, rather than as an ordinary (and,
+outside of a string, invalid) byte; see the [FAQ entry](../../home/faq.md#nul-bytes-in-the-input) for details and the
+[`JSON_STRICT_NUL_HANDLING`](../macros/json_strict_nul_handling.md) macro to opt into rejecting it instead.
+
 ## Examples
 
 ??? example
@@ -111,6 +115,8 @@ A UTF-8 byte order mark is silently ignored.
 - [parse](parse.md) - deserialize from a compatible input
 - [sax_parse](sax_parse.md) - parse input using the SAX interface
 - [operator>>](../operator_gtgt.md) - deserialize from stream
+- [`JSON_STRICT_NUL_HANDLING`](../macros/json_strict_nul_handling.md) - opt in to rejecting a NUL byte in the input
+  instead of treating it as end of input
 
 ## Version history
 
@@ -120,6 +126,8 @@ A UTF-8 byte order mark is silently ignored.
 - Added `ignore_trailing_commas` in version 3.13.0.
 - Extended container support (1) to include types with lvalue-only ADL `begin`/`end` (matching `std::begin`/`std::end` semantics) in version 3.13.0.
 - Extended overload (2) to accept heterogeneous iterator+sentinel pairs (C++20 ranges support) in version 3.13.0.
+- `JSON_STRICT_NUL_HANDLING` added in version 3.13.0 to optionally reject a NUL byte in the input instead of treating
+  it as end of input; planned to become the default in version 4.0.0.
 
 !!! warning "Deprecation"