[senfiaj]

Well, not saying to always use it, but if the string size is big enough, the overhead of 2 ints becomes relatively vanishing. For generic dynamically sized strings it probably has more advantages than disadvantages. But in any case, sure, if every single byte matters or some structure requires specific memory layout, then fine. I just don't think these things are the majority of use cases. Keep in mind that the cached lengths can increase performance, since you don't have to recalculate string lengths.