final string patch

[Benjamin Kosnik]

Loren I would appreciate it if you could corral this patch into CVS. It 
seems to be based on your work and you seem to have a much better grip on 
it than I. Does this sound possible?

Thanks,
benjamin

> Since it has been 4-5 months since this issue was last raised, I would
> like to sleep on it until Paolo is available again (since he is
> willing to be a co-author of the patch perhaps he can do some more
> tuning before we add it to the mainline ;-).