Actually in cases 2 and 3, since the first byte is "special", the length of the actual string must be the next byte. I've updated it to show that. This is why

Actually in cases 2 and 3, since the first byte is "special", the length of the actual string must be the next byte. I've updated it to show that. This is why there is no length-254 string. And in the 3rd case, the maximum segment length is 10 bytes shorter. For a multi-segment setup the length of the entire string would be found by summing the lengths of each segment. This is still "fast" because you would have to, at most, test one byte per segment to find the next length byte, to find the total string length.