The lack of native support for strings in C++ was a determined decision on the part of Stroustrup (I'd love to read his book on the history of the development of C++).
It is largely this decision which has made C++ everything it is (good and bad). Templates are driven by the need to implement vectors, so that strings can be vector<char> (or vector<short> for unicode). Allocation and comparison get added to the template implementation, which requires default parameters. Horribly long and ugly template definitions (std::vector<char, std::alocator, std::traits<char> >::basic_function, etc.) lead to changes in error detection and reporting.
What if we take a step back.
What if we look at a few simple additions to C, that will bring in some of the functionality people have come to enjoy in higher level languages (and what functionality is "good", how do we define "good").
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