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Making a shallow copy of a const or immutable value removes the outer layer of immutability: Copying an immutable string (immutable(char[])) returns a string (immutable(char)[]). The immutable pointer and length are being copied and the copies are mutable. The referred data has not been copied and keeps its qualifier, in the example immutable.
In computer science, string interning is a method of storing only one copy of each distinct string value, which must be immutable. [1] Interning strings makes some string processing tasks more time-efficient or space-efficient at the cost of requiring more time when the string is created or interned.
For function that manipulate strings, modern object-oriented languages, like C# and Java have immutable strings and return a copy (in newly allocated dynamic memory), while others, like C manipulate the original string unless the programmer copies data to a new string.
In computer science, having value semantics (also value-type semantics or copy-by-value semantics) means for an object that only its value counts, not its identity. [1] [2] Immutable objects have value semantics trivially, [3] and in the presence of mutation, an object with value semantics can only be uniquely-referenced at any point in a program.
The resulting object is called an object copy or simply copy of the original object. Copying is basic but has subtleties and can have significant overhead. There are several ways to copy an object, most commonly by a copy constructor or cloning. Copying is done mostly so the copy can be modified or moved, or the current value preserved.
A constant data structure or object is referred to as "immutable" in object-oriented parlance. An object being immutable confers some advantages in program design. For instance, it may be "copied" simply by copying its pointer or reference, avoiding a time-consuming copy operation and conserving memory.
Many languages have explicit pointers or references. Reference types differ from these in that the entities they refer to are always accessed via references; for example, whereas in C++ it's possible to have either a std:: string and a std:: string *, where the former is a mutable string and the latter is an explicit pointer to a mutable string (unless it's a null pointer), in Java it is only ...
A string is generally considered as a data type and is often implemented as an array data structure of bytes (or words) that stores a sequence of elements, typically characters, using some character encoding. String may also denote more general arrays or other sequence (or list) data types and structures.