s issues).
</p>
<p>
This function is mainly useful to convert (temporary)
<tt>"const&nbsp;char&nbsp;*"</tt> pointers returned by
C&nbsp;functions to Lua strings and store them or pass them to other
functions expecting a Lua string. The Lua string is an (interned) copy
of the data and bears no relation to the original data area anymore.
Lua strings are 8&nbsp;bit clean and may be used to hold arbitrary,
non-character data.
</p>
<p>
Performance notice: it's faster to pass the length of the string, if
it's kno