Which of these statements best describes how strings are represented in C?

In C, strings are represented as arrays of characters that are terminated by a null character, also known as the null terminator ('\0'). This means that a string is essentially a sequence of characters stored in contiguous memory locations, followed by a special character that signifies the end of the string. This null termination is crucial for functions that manipulate strings because it allows them to determine where the string ends, enabling proper reading and processing of the character data.

Using an array of characters with a null terminator is efficient and supports various operations, such as concatenation and comparison of strings, by utilizing standard library functions like strlen, strcpy, and strcmp. The design choice of concluding the string with a null character allows flexibility in string length without needing to store the length explicitly.

On the other hand, the other options do not accurately reflect how strings are represented in C. An array of integers would imply treating character codes as integer values, which is not relevant to string representation. Dynamic memory allocation is a method that can be used to allocate memory for strings, but it doesn't define how a string is structured in memory. A fixed-size array of characters without a termination character would not allow for the proper functioning of string operations as it lacks a