Why bother drawing a line, just make more efficient types. In C++11+ Move construction make doing what you want easy and efficient A string type for query coul

Why bother drawing a line, just make more efficient types. In C++11+ Move construction make doing what you want easy and efficient A string type for query could look like its making a copy but just steal the pointers to the buffers the original had, then modify the query part of the underlying buffer. It would cost several more pointer copies than doing it the insecure way a smart compiler would probably optimize those away.