/** A std::string with well-known representation
*
- * This is a (incomplete) drop-in replacement for std::string.
+ * This is a (incomplete) drop-in replacement for `std::string`.
+ * It has a fixed POD representation (`simgrid::xbt::string_data`)
+ * which can be used to easily read the string content from another
+ * process.
*
- * This is used for cross-process access to strings
- * (when the MC is enabled).
+ * The internal representation of a `std::string` is private.
+ * We could add some code to read this for a given implementation.
+ * However, even if we focus on GNU libstdc++ with Itanium ABI
+ * GNU libstdc++ currently has two different ABIs
+ *
+ * * the pre-C++11 is a pointer to a ref-counted
+ * string-representation (with support for COW);
+ *
+ * * the [C++11-conforming implementation](https://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-5/changes.html)
+ * does not use refcouting/COW but has a small string optimization.
*/
XBT_PUBLIC_CLASS string : private string_data {
static const char NUL;
