2.6.2 Strings

The version API often used char* for both setting and setting string values. This is not a problem for setting (although encodings can be an issue), but can introduce subtle bugs in the lifetimes of pointers if the buffer stack isn't used properly. The buffer stack is abstracted into PlStringBuffers, but it would be preferable to avoid its use altogether. C++, unlike C, has a standard string that allows easily keeping a copy rather than dealing with a pointer that might become invalid. (Also, C++ strings can contain null characters.)

C++ has default conversion operators from char* to std::string, so some of the API support only std::string, even though this can cause a small inefficiency. If this proves to be a problem, additional overloaded functions and methods can be provided in future (note that some compilers have optimizations that reduce the overheads of using std::string); but for performance-critical code, the C functions can still be used.

There still remains the problems of Unicode and encodings. std::wstring is one way of dealing with this. And for interfaces that use std::string, an encoding can be specified.^{12As of 2022-11, this had only been partially implemented}. Some of the details for this - such as the default encoding - may change slightly in the future.