Well that's a whole other topic: does your string library support copy on write or not? If you have mostly short strings and SSO you are better off without cop

Well that's a whole other topic: does your string library support copy on write or not? If you have mostly short strings and SSO you are better off without copy on write. My string class has copy on write, including splicing- so it uses the most space.. I'm sure it's not really worth it (It also supports string semi-predicates: you can safely return NULL as a string and test for it- I sure wish they had this in the standard library). struct Stringraw { int ref; // Reference count int len; // String length // String data starts here }; class String { Stringraw *raw; // Pointer to possibly shared malloc block holding string char *s; // Start of string in raw int len; // Length of string . . . // Sub-string inline String substr(int start,int size) const { String x; x.s=s+start; x.len=size; x.raw=raw; ++raw->ref; return x; }