Joel's article is a bit long in the tooth. As of C++11, std::string is required to use both a length and a null terminator. With the short string optimization,

Joel's article is a bit long in the tooth. As of C++11, std::string is required to use both a length and a null terminator. With the short string optimization, it could even have that exact layout. > Lazy programmers would do this, and have slow programs char* str = "*Hello!"; str[0] = strlen(str) - 1; Modern compilers understand strlen, and will replace the function call with a constant where possible. That code's not slow anymore: https://godbolt.org/z/Kjh8b44Kf https://godbolt.org/z/Kjh8b44Kf