It’s not an either or thing, there is probably no need to allocate strings in the arena.
Some cpp structures do allow for custom allocators, but you are more likely to have an arena instance and call some specific function on it and it will do the allocation for you. It usually operates on only a few types, not meant for arbitrary allocations.
> Some cpp structures do allow for custom allocators,
Yeah, that's what I was thinking about, but my only knowledge of allocators comes from gcc error messages which include all the template parameters - I have no idea how they work or how to switch to another one :(
I get the idea, though, it's basically what Erlang does for its processes - each one has a "private heap" just for it. If the process exits, the whole chunk of memory can be reclaimed and there's no need to run GC on it anymore (there's no sharing of memory between processes in Erlang, at all, so it's safe).
