I was going more toward "closer to reality". But I take your point. Somewhere we're going to need extra info about the string itself, whether that extra info is

I was going more toward "closer to reality". But I take your point. Somewhere we're going to need extra info about the string itself, whether that extra info is a magic terminator or a magic prefix. The magic prefix gives great benefit, but also is more complex to implement if you want to store an arbitrary-length string.