Strings that have been parsed from the original XML document (qualified name components, character data, comment text, etc.) are, by default, represented by length/value pairs. This length indicates the actual length of the text represented by the pair. There are no string terminators, such as a NULL character used to indicate the end of a piece of text. Length fields may be zero, indicating that a particular string is not present (for example, the namespace string length for an element that is not namespace qualified will be zero), and the value length will also be zero. In the absence of a String Identifier exit (see String Identifiers), all strings in the parsed data stream are represented by a length/value pair.