- Null-terminated strings in C are outdated and prone to errors; length-based strings are superior.
- Length-based strings store both pointer and size, enabling efficient operations like substrings without extra allocations.
- C strings' ambiguity in length definitions (e.g., snprintf) leads to bugs and confusion in handling null terminators.
- Length-based strings support arbitrary binary data, including null bytes, unlike C strings which rely on sentinels.
- C strings force unnecessary allocations for common operations, while length-based strings allow efficient slicing and referencing.
- Modern hardware and compilers reduce performance benefits of sentinel-based strings; length-based designs are more robust and clear.