By that I meant that there is obviously value in abstracting away tasks and details that the programmer would otherwise need to manage. That is why compilers ex

By that I meant that there is obviously value in abstracting away tasks and details that the programmer would otherwise need to manage. That is why compilers exist. The value-add for abstracting a string is certainly more than the cost of 4 bytes of memory in the typical case. Put another way: optimizing the management of strings in memory is almost never the best use of time to make progress toward an organization's objectives, and doubly so when that kind of micro-tuning can actually introduce security risks