interfacing with C: strings and byte vectors

[yawniek via Digitalmars-d-learn]

my C library works a lot with strings defined in C as:
struct vec_t {
    char *base;
    size_t len;
}

is there a easy way to feed regular D strings to functions that 
accept vec_t*
without creating a vec_t every time
or do i write wrappers for these functions and if so, what is the 
most elegant way
to build them?

so far i defined vec_t as:

struct vec_t {
    char *base;
    size_t len;

    this(string s) { base = s.ptr; len = s.lenght; }

nothrow @nogc inout(char)[] toString() inout @property { return 
base[0 .. len]; }

    nothrow @nogc @property const(char)[]  toSlice()
    {
        return cast(string)  base[0..len];
    }
    alias toString this;
}

but i guess there is a more elegant way?!