[doboyy]

The thing you are pointing to could have its length prefixed. I've always assumed that this isn't the case because nobody could commit to the size of the length prefix. Is it string8, string16, string32, or string64? Using a sentinel value to denote length is less opinionated and more portable.

[jstimpfle]

And also unbeatable in memory efficiency.

[doboyy]

Unfortunately, it's often algorithmically less efficient and more error prone, so everybody ends up replicating what git is doing with 'strbuf' but in slightly incompatible ways. The effect makes dealing with strings in C unnecessarily unpleasant.