Merging upstream version 1.37.0.

Signed-off-by: Daniel Baumann <daniel.baumann@progress-linux.org>

1 files changed, 20 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/libnetdata/string/README.md b/libnetdata/string/README.md
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+<!--
+custom_edit_url: https://github.com/netdata/netdata/edit/master/libnetdata/string/README.md
+-->
+
+# STRING
+
+STRING provides a way to allocate and free text strings, while de-duplicating them.
+
+It can be used similarly to libc string functions:
+
+ - `strdup()` and `strdupz()` become `string_strdupz()`.
+ - `strlen()` becomes `string_strlen()` (and it does not walkthrough the bytes of the string).
+ - `free()` and `freez()` become `string_freez()`.
+
+There is also a special `string_dup()` function that increases the reference counter of a STRING, avoiding the
+index lookup to find it.
+
+Once there is a `STRING *`, the actual `const char *` can be accessed with `string2str()`.
+
+All STRING should be constant. Changing the contents of a `const char *` that has been acquired by `string2str()` should never happen. 
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