Comment by kazinator

> pointer + length string interface

If it's a 32 bit length, that will be limiting for some 64 bit programs.

If it's a 64 bit length, it means tiny strings take up more space.

Hey, do both! Have the length be a "size_t" and then have "compat_32" shim around single system call that takes at least one string argument.

Wee!

Imagine a parallel world in which mainstream OS kernel developers had seen the light 30 years ago and used len + data for system calls. You'd now have to be support ancient binary programs that are passing strings where the length is uint16. Oh right, I forgot! We can just screw programs that are more than five years old. All the cool users are on the latest version of everything.

> if you are not using the same memory system in the caller and the calle you have to marshal between them always. No matter if you are using null terminated strings or a pointer + length pair.

Null-terminated byte strings are always marshaled and ready to be sent literally anywhere. They have no byte order issues. No multi-byte length field whose size and endianness we have to know. If they are UTF-8, their character encoding is already marshaled also (that's the point of using UTF-8 everywhere).