Remember that they’re doing an _incremental_ rewrite. At each step of the way, C++ code will be calling Rust code, and Rust code will be calling C++ code. One f

Remember that they’re doing an _incremental_ rewrite. At each step of the way, C++ code will be calling Rust code, and Rust code will be calling C++ code. One function or class at a time, code will be rewritten from C++ into Rust (though not really idiomatic Rust). The string type used by the Rust code must match the semantics and layout of the string type used by the C++ code as much as possible because any infelicity there must be patched up by a run–time conversion each time code in one language calls the other. If you want to change string types, it is best to do it either before or after the rewrite, not during. And I bet doing it afterwards will be easier than doing it beforehand.