[minipci1321]

> Raw null terminated strings are just a bad idea.

Absolutely agree. Scanning the memory until "we find it", potentially crossing boundaries between segments of memory with different characteristics (caching etc.) just doesn't seem right in general, and if I recall, some CPUs even used to have published errata related to that.

> std::string` and the bafflingly just-introduced `std::string_view` are the right way to handle strings.

I'd even go straight to custom implementation of Hollerith strings. Literals have lengths known at compile time, protocols would either carry the lengths alongside the strings, or be trusted (to have good strlen behavior) until they do, composite strings would compute the length out of the components, etc. This doesn't seem too complex to do, looking from from my bell tower, but I know many people here would frown upon mentioning C++ in the context of embedded development (my area).