[TheLoneWolfling]

Agreed. The copy-on-substring behavior is a real pain, and I don't know if there's any workaround.

[needusername]

Not using String, eg. using CharBuffer (and #slice) or building your own. It's annoying and not always an option.

[TheLoneWolfling]

Yep, as you said, not always an option. No way to pass them to external things expecting strings, for one. Wouldn't be an issue, except that you can't extend strings.