28 Nov
2015
28 Nov
'15
5:44 a.m.
On Fri, 27 Nov 2015, Larry McVoy wrote:
I've gotten sucked into an embedded system
project and they are running
out of memory. I have a vague memory of some sort of tool that I think
Bill Joy wrote (or maybe he told me about it) that would do some magic
processing of all the string constants and somehow it de-dupped the
space.
Though now that I'm typing this that doesn't seem possible. Does this
ring a bell with anyone? I'm sure it was for the PDP 11 port.
I think you're referring to an abomination called "xstrings" (or
"xstr"?).
It was described by a colleague of mine as "about as subtle as a car
crash"; it worked by comparing strings at compilation time, even unto the
tails of said strings.
Woe betide the user if any string was changed at run time...
It ranks right up there with nargs() as What Not To Do.
--
Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU) "Those who don't understand security will
suffer."