cchString

cchString is a compact, immutable string abstraction designed for efficient text handling in C and C++ programs. It emphasizes minimal memory use, fast comparisons, and zero-cost views, making it suitable for high-performance and resource-constrained contexts. The name suggests a compact, copy-on-write style string representation that favors reuse of storage when possible.

Design and implementation notes describe cchString as storing length, a pointer to character data, and optional metadata such as a cached hash and a reference count. It employs small-string optimization to store short text inline and uses shared storage with copy-on-write semantics for longer content. The default encoding is UTF-8, with support for interoperability with other string types in the host language.

API and features commonly include creation from UTF-8, concatenation, substring, and slicing that aim to avoid unnecessary copying. Operations cover equality and relational comparisons, substring search, and text normalization. A cached hash enables fast equality checks, while slicing creates views that reference the original storage rather than duplicating data. Interfacing with native strings, such as C strings and C++ std::string, is typically supported to ease integration with existing codebases.

In practice, cchString is used in text processing pipelines, compilers, editors, and network protocols where many strings are created and compared. Its immutability, thread safety, and predictable memory behavior are highlighted as advantages in multithreaded environments and large-scale parsing tasks.

History and context place cchString within the broader study of efficient immutable string representations, copy-on-write techniques, and reference-counted storage. Variants and bindings exist across languages and libraries, reflecting ongoing interest in fast, memory-efficient string handling. See also: immutable strings, copy-on-write, small-string optimization, string interning.