It’s an old question, I hope you have already found a useful one. In case you didn’t, please check out the Simple Dynamic String library on github. I copy&paste the author’s description here:
SDS is a string library for C designed to augment the limited libc string
handling functionalities by adding heap allocated strings that are:
- Simpler to use.
- Binary safe.
- Computationally more efficient.
- But yet… Compatible with normal C string functions.
This is achieved using an alternative design in which instead of using a C
structure to represent a string, we use a binary prefix that is stored
before the actual pointer to the string that is returned by SDS to the user.
+--------+-------------------------------+-----------+
| Header | Binary safe C alike string... | Null term |
+--------+-------------------------------+-----------+
|
`-> Pointer returned to the user.
Because of meta data stored before the actual returned pointer as a prefix,
and because of every SDS string implicitly adding a null term at the end of
the string regardless of the actual content of the string, SDS strings work
well together with C strings and the user is free to use them interchangeably
with real-only functions that access the string in read-only.