[ben0x539]

I don't think these strings ever sit on the C stack, except maybe if some C code/extension is being really clever. The standard representation for variables is a tagged pointer as far as I know, so I would assume that is all that goes on the stack. This optimization probably just saves another level of indirection.

[throwaway0094]

Hm, ok. Still, at some level fragmentation is eating gobs of space even if correct for the "average".