2.11BSD/src/man/man1/strcompact.1

.\" Public domain 1994 - Steven Schultz
.\"
.\"	@(#)strcompact.1	1.0 (2.11BSD GTE) 1/25/94
.\"
.TH strcompact 1 "January 25, 1994"
.UC 2
.SH NAME
strcompact \- string compaction for object files
.SH SYNOPSIS
strcompact [ \fBobject_name\fP ... ]
.SH DESCRIPTION
strcompact
scans the symbol and string tables of an object file looking for multiple
references in the symbol table to the same string.  The string offset of
symbol table entries is updated to preserve only one copy of the string.
.PP
.B
strcompact
cut the size of the kernel string table by about 25%.
.PP
The user must have write permission to the object/executable file.
.PP
.B strcompact
writes to \fIstderr\fP the number of shared strings found.
.PP
strcompact
exits 0 if successful, and >0 if an error occurred.
.SH SEE ALSO
sort(1), symcompact(1), symorder(1), uniq(1)
.SH BUGS
Execution speed leaves much to be desired - on a 11/73 it takes about
4 minutes to process the string table of the kernel.  Fortunately this
is only done once when the kernel is created.
.PP
Although
.B strcompact
may be run on .o files as well as executables but this is probably not
worth the trouble since the linker will not create shared strings in the
final executable.