I wonder if there is a reasonable solution that somehow incorporates the benefits of string interning. However, given that it is really designed for specialized scenarios, maybe that is not practical/useful.

Also, if any one is interested, I believe this is the paper that the article was referencing:

http://www.cs.ubc.ca/local/reading/proceedings/spe91-95/spe/...

Erlang's had this for 20 years. It's called the "iolist". Most library calls in the language support it.