I agree with the framing here, and I agree a small bit of syntax would go a long way.

FWIW, you will see a class called StringPiece copied all over a lot of open source Google projects, including Chrome, Ninja, RE2, probably Android, etc.

That is essentially a pointer-length pair. I agree it would be nice to have a dedicated syntax for it, and not a class that everybody has to copy around.

C++ 17 names this string_view (long overdue!)

I just Googled and apparently there was a problem with array_view ? That's a shame.

https://www.reddit.com/r/cpp/comments/5ya5pe/whatever_happen...