# Pascal strings in Rust.

A `PascalString`, or `ShortString` is a String which stores its data on the stack. Because of this, it has
a fixed maximum size, which cannot be changed. Traditionally, the size of a `PascalString` is 256 bytes -
the first byte stores the length, which means that each remaining byte is indexable using only that byte.

This is a very niche string type - generally, you are better off using `std::string::String`, or the
`AsciiString` type from the `ascii` crate if you need an ascii string. They have no upper size limit, and
are cheaper to pass around as they are only 64 bytes on the stack. Generally, you should only use `PascalString` if:

* You know that you absolutely, certainly cannot do without heap allocation.
* You need to store your string data inline into your `struct` type - for example if you will allocate a bunch
  of these custom `struct` types into a pool allocator, and cannot afford the heap fragmentation.
* You will keep, allocate, and deallocate a *lot* of short strings in your program.