Comment by account42

Pretty much all string implementations have the ability to give you a pointer and a length which you can then pass on to the foreign interface. Essentially, he API always takes a non-owning string view. C strings on the other hand require you to store that terminating NUL next to the string. This is only bearable because most string implementations are designed to deal with because C APIs are so popular.

For returning strings, ownership is a bigger problem than the exact representation. OS APIs typically make you provide a buffer an then fail if it was not big enough.