The string compare has a lot of branching and looks at both strings. The hash method one checks the hash of the test string(size_t) with the size_t of the other string. The hash itself, say fnv1a, can be very quick(a xor and a multiply I think per character) I think I remember testing this and it was quicker. ill try to find the test, but it is easily done. Either way, it's the only way to use a switch statement this way

If it’s possible for the string to not be in the set then you have to look at all chars.

Otherwise there are some cases you can skip characters. I generally don’t use this optimization when writing Tries because it’s tricky and rarely makes a difference.