title: MIPS not recognizing NULL
body: <p>Forgive me for the easiness of this question but I am new to MIPS and am getting an odd error:</p>
  
  <pre><code>.data
  
  myString: .asciiz "P5"
  
  
  .text
  
  
  li $v0 4
  
  la $a0, myString
  newLoop:
      syscall
      addi $a0, $a0, 1
      beq $a0, $zero, done
  
      j newLoop
  
  done:
      li $v0, 10
      syscall
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>My program never terminates despite the fact that there is a null character (as I have gleaned from other posts, equivalent to $zero) at the end of myString. I would have thought that $a0 would point to "P", then "5", then "\0" and then jump to done and terminate.</p>
  
  <p>Thanks for your eyes!</p>