History has shown that, when it comes to strings, developers have a hard time getting even something as simple as null-termination correct. If grapheme handling

History has shown that, when it comes to strings, developers have a hard time getting even something as simple as null-termination correct. If grapheme handling is complex, that's an argument for having it implemented by a small team of experts exactly once. The resulting abstraction might not be leak-proof, but then no abstraction is.