Erlang strings is just a syntactic sugar over lists.

  1> [104,105].
  "hi"
  
  2> [$h,$i].  
  [104,105]
  
  3> "hi".
  "hi"

Which is efficient for some uses (i.e. iterating over UTF32 characters) and inefficient for others (high memory usage).

You can always use:

  * atoms - for interned strings or enums
  * binaries - for memory efficiency (i.e. UTF8 byte sequences)
  * IO-lists - for efficient appending and IO.

What I would like is a per-module compiler directive/pragma, which will turn every "string" into <<"string">>, while @"string" will remain syntax sugar for list.