malloc also has internal bookkeeping overhead, typically 16-32 bytes per allocation. Which is why one should never allocate a single (short) string from a gene

malloc also has internal bookkeeping overhead, typically 16-32 bytes per allocation. Which is why one should never allocate a single (short) string from a generic allocator. Instead, one allocates a big chunk upfront (e.g. 4K bytes or more), and breaks from that, using a simple index that points to the first unused bytes. In this way, the overhead of allocating a string is truly only the terminating zero byte - no alignment constraints. This scheme is easy to implement as long as strings don't need to be freed individually.