Ok, so pre-allocating then. That's sort of equivalent to new StringBuffer(9), except java uses the heap. Safe types doesn't stop you from doing this. You do ne

Ok, so pre-allocating then. That's sort of equivalent to new StringBuffer(9), except java uses the heap. Safe types doesn't stop you from doing this. You do need another length-field though, one for the allocated size and one for the used size. In c++, std::string already has this feature with the reserve/capacity functions, STL is also heap based but it is possible with some effort to pass it a stack allocator. Now c++ isn't exactly the best reference when it comes to these things either but just saying conceptually fat pointers doesn't stop you from doing these things, see WalterBrights reply for a better example.