zena:string

Create a new array from a ByteArray.

Important: This should be considered a private constructor - strings are created by the compiler for literals or by StringBuilder/transcoding functions. When Zena supports private constructors, this will be marked as private to prevent misuse.

The encoding of the backing bytes. Encoding is deliberately an internal detail almost everywhere; this exists for boundary code — canonical-ABI marshaling, host interop — that copies the bytes verbatim and must assert what it is copying rather than assume.

The length of the string in bytes.

Since string operations like slicing and getByteAt operate on bytes, this consistently returns the byte capacity of the view regardless of the underlying encoding (WTF-8 or WTF-16).

TODO: Rename to byteLength or remove entirely.

Creates a String from a ByteArray with given bounds and encoding. This is used by StringBuilder and other internal operations.

Creates a new string by concatenating all parts. This is more efficient than chained + operators for multiple strings, as it allocates the result array only once.

Generic over the array representation: element access resolves through the bound, so each specialization reads its receiver directly with no interface dispatch.

The raw-array entry the compiler's synthesized string joins call — template-literal lowering resolves it by name against a one-parameter raw-array signature. Its body is also the call site that keeps the FixedArray specialization of fromParts reachable. User code calls fromParts.

Returns the byte at the given index.

For WTF-8 strings, this is the UTF-8 byte at the given index. For WTF-16 strings, this is the byte (not code unit) at the given index.

O(1) zero-copy slice by byte indices. Returns a new String sharing the backing array.

SAFETY: Indices are byte offsets, not code point offsets. Slicing in the middle of a multi-byte UTF-8 sequence produces an invalid string. Use StringReader.mark() to get safe positions.

Force a copy - creates a new String with its own backing array. Use this when you need to release the parent string's memory.

Copies bytes from this string to a target ByteArray.

Returns true if this string starts with the given prefix.

Returns true if this string ends with the given suffix.

Splits the string into an array of substrings separated by the given separator.

Returns the backing ByteArray if the String spans the entire array (i.e. not a slice). Used for optimization by StringBuilder.

FNV-1a hash of the string's bytes, cached in #hashCode after the first computation. Delegates to the compiler's shared string hash helper (generateStringHashFunction), which reads and updates the cache field.

Returns this string with every ASCII letter lowercased; every other byte is left alone. See asciiLowerByte for why this is deliberately not Unicode-aware.

Byte-wise, which is exactly right for WTF-8: an ASCII byte is always a whole code point, and no continuation byte falls in 0x41..0x5A, so no multi-byte sequence can be corrupted. A WTF-16 string would instead need code-unit stepping — and that branch belongs here, on #encoding, rather than in every caller, which is the reason this lives on String at all. No String method supports WTF-16 yet and nothing constructs one today.

Returns this when there is nothing to change, so the common already-lowercase case does not allocate.

Returns this string with every ASCII letter uppercased.

Concatenates two strings and returns a new string.

Equality operator - compares the bytes in each view.