Decide string length at compile time (#1130)

Decide string length at compile time (#1130)

I run into many premature optimizations in our codebase which are
unnecessary.

In this particular case `strlen()` is optimized at compile time even at
`-O0` with `gcc`.

I would value higher code quality than dealing with these things in our
future endeavours. If this is accepted I may supply some more
readability patches.