Copying a string by doing x = y is rare among languages. Most copy references like C does. An example of an outlier that does a string copy like you want would be C++ on its string class.<p>You can copy&#x2F;initialize strings in C without ever writing a single loop by using strcpy. As for hardware, you need not have something so exotic. x86 for instance has a string copy instruction. The C strcpy function is often compiled to it.