slice.net

ArraySegment<T> is just a array reference with range delimiters. Slice/Span gives you a low overhead, type safe window into a block of memory that can be reinterpreted without allocating new memory. It's implementation involves some IL level pointer hacks to keep it fast. Joe Duffy's first implmentation of it is here: https://github.com/joeduffy/slice.net The more recent work for CoreFX is here: https://github.com/dotnet/corefxlab/tree/master/src/System.S...

I'm not sure if you could replicate System.String, because the oddity is happening at the metadata level - apart from special cases like String, .Net types must be compile-time constant length (if I remember correctly). However, at the instruction level you can do some pretty awesome stuff. This slice[1] library is able to verifiably and safely grab a slice of data out of any arbitrary structure by using a MSIL feature that was invented for C++/CLR. The call site[2] is not unsafe. [1]: https://github.com/joeduffy/slice.net/blob/master/src/PtrUti... [2]: https://github.com/joeduffy/slice.net/blob/master/src/Slice....