Of course there are reasons to use short strings, just as there are reasons
for using ANSIString, RawByteString and all the other string types. Horses
for courses.
In the case of short strings, the reasons are the same reasons there always
were - most especially for use in records used for structured file access
(file of <record type>). And I am not so sure about the idea that 255
bytes are always allocated - surely the whole point of a declared short
string type of a specified length is that it will hold a string of that
declared length, come what may.
Otherwise using file of <record type> containing short string fields would
never have worked!
