The original title is "Rust Strings Demystified: Literals, Slices, and Fat Pointers Under the Hood"

Short summary

A detailed explanation of Rust's string system covering String vs &str, string literals, slices, and fat pointers. The article walks through memory layout showing how &str is a 16-byte fat pointer (pointer + length), why literals get 'static lifetime from .rodata, and how sub-slicing is zero-cost. Code examples and memory diagrams make the concepts concrete for developers coming from Python or JavaScript.

• •&str is a 16-byte fat pointer (pointer + length), not a null-terminated C string
• •String literals live in .rodata with 'static lifetime — returning them is safe
• •Sub-slicing is zero-cost: just a new fat pointer, no allocation or copy

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