> and bytes are what what you're usually interested in anyways.

Bytes are relevant when I have to allocate memory otherwise some definition of "character" is often more relevant. Even if I trim text to fit in a buffer I don't want to trim inside a "character" but get the most number of fitting "characters" Now "characters" are of course complicated as grapheme clusters are what is useful the most for human interaction ... but those are quite out of scope for a "simple" string library ...