Scanning for the string length (e.g strlen()) is asymptotically worse than reading a fixed size integer, so obviously don't do that unless it's a good memory/sp

Scanning for the string length (e.g strlen()) is asymptotically worse than reading a fixed size integer, so obviously don't do that unless it's a good memory/speed tradeoff (i.e. when you know the string is at most say, 16 bytes long). Overall, it seems you didn't read my comment either. Or was I _that_ unclear?