Pre-RFC: Guarantee that pointers to `OsStr` has the same layout as pointers to `str`/`[u8]`
Rust Internals [Unofficial]
May 27, 2026
I could maybe imagine storing a bit or two that says if it's known to be valid UTF-8 or not (allowing to skip checks in some cases). I don't think std will ever do anything with locales, at least that seems to be against the current philosophy.
Discussion in the ATmosphere