The names of these things are hazy and inconsistent. In Java and C# an interned string is the same type as other strings. Others describe atoms as interned strings, some call them symbols. At my work we call the u16/u32 atoms and interned strings are the single pointer strings described above.

> Atoms: is this similar to interned strings?

Yes. It is exactly how they are described.

https://docs.rs/string_cache/latest/string_cache/struct.Atom...

> Represents a string that has been interned.