Why Strings as Classes?

[BCS]

Reply to superdan,

>> The existing D string implementation is exactly what I'd expect to see
>> inside the guts of a string class, because encodings are important and
>> efficiency is important. But those implementation details shouldn't be
>> exposed through a public API.
> 
> exactly at this point your argument kinda explodes. yes, you should
> see that stuff inside the guts of a string. which means builtin
> strings should be just arrays that you build larger stuff from. but
> wait. that's exactly what happens right now.
> 

Ditto, D is a *systems language* It's *supposed* to have access to the lowest 
level representation and build stuff on top of that