c-fancy-string VS Universal-Garbage-Colector

Funny enough, I recently (just last week) published a project using a style very similar to what you are describing in your article. The project is called lib: A C library for easy and fun string manipulation. I my case, however, the structure's definition is done in the implementation file, in order to create an abstract type whose members are private (at least, they try to be private; it's always possible to get them).

I can totally relate with this post. I was faced with a similar situation a few weeks ago while experimenting with a C library for a particular network protocol and started struggling while trying to implement basic string operations. I ended up taking a tangent and writing a simple string manipulation library with an API similar to JavaScript's String API. I am sharing it here in case anyone is interested. I called it lib. Be warned though: performance was not at the top of my list of design goals for this project. In other words, there is a lot of copying of things around happening, which comes at a cost. But I think it's going to be a fun library to work with for projects where performance is not a deciding factor (e.g., script-style programs).