From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Message-ID: <ae7fd60048c6a25ec798a85d7f3cb33f@collyer.net>
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Subject: Re: [9fans] Install from CD fails
Date: Tue, 18 Apr 2006 18:14:08 -0700
From: geoff@collyer.net
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The hack Richard refers to was that, at least on the PDP-11, the C
compiler emitted a reference to a symbol called `_fltused' if and only
if a floating-point variable, function or constant was seen when
compiling a given source file (as I recall).  _fltused was defined
only in the file containing the %[efg] output conversions for printf.
The PDP-11 implementation relied on having a dummy version of the FP
routines later in the library (and upon the loader observing ordering
within a library) so that the generic printf could call the %[efg]
routines, but today we could probably do that with a function pointer
(nil if no %[efg] routines loaded, so don't call them).  It seemed to
me to be a simple and elegant hack that we could revive if the space
consumption really matters.