Re #3: A big downside is that you you can't easily take ownership of an existing buffer and treat it as this string type. string s; char some_buf[]; string_

Re #3: A big downside is that you you can't easily take ownership of an existing buffer and treat it as this string type. string s; char some_buf[]; string_take(&s, some_buf, some_capacity); Also you would of course never dynamically allocate string structs, just the data member if needed.