This page has details of Fast C Strings.
Read the PDF for details, and unzip the file to a directory, say FastStr to use the code.
Read Bill Gates / Microsoft's response below. The TIF files is a direct photocopy of Microsoft's reply.
Read the message I write to the C community in 1989 here. Since then, when I worked at IBM, I attempted to interest IBM in doing something about the problem.
In my opinion, something MUST be done for the sake of all computer uses.
Essentially, having to search for the binary zero at the end of a string to find it's length is costing approximatel 20 times more CPU power that doing strings the way PL/I, Pascal and other languages utilise strings. In addition, C String methods can (and do) overwrite storage accidentally when a long string is copied to a short string.
Clem Clarke, Feb 2, 2018