[TUHS] tool (that wnj wrote?) that reduced the data segment size?

[downing.nick@gmail.com (Nick Downing)]

Guys I wrote a more modern version of xstr for a project (porting PDP11
utilities and games to a modern compiler for a different embedded system).
How it worked was similar to i18n utilities on a modern system. (I planned
to internationalize later). So what it did was remove any strings bracketed
with _("blah blah") to a strings file and then replace with a 32-bit
integer offset into the file. I had utilities like _printf(long off, ...)
which would access the strings file to get the necessary string and print
it, or just _strdup() which would bring it into memory where the programmer
could use as normal and free when done. What I did next was to have the
linker treat the strings file as a resource and merge it into the
executable, so that with a little trickery the strings could be directly
accessed from flash ROM while not taking any of the precious 64 kbytes RAM
in the program's data space. Happy to dig this up and share.
Nick
On 30/11/2015 2:26 PM, "John Cowan" <cowan at mercury.ccil.org> wrote:

> Charles Anthony scripsit:
>
> > "The Optimizing Compiler Writer's Motto: It is no sin to make a wrong
> > program worse."
>
> It is if the rules for which programs are wrong are essentially beyond
> human comprehension on the fly.  Anyway: "That program has about a
> thousand bugs.  Which would you rather, that we fixed all the bugs or
> that we made it run a thousand times faster?"
>
> --
> John Cowan          http://www.ccil.org/~cowan        cowan at ccil.org
> Heckler: "Go on, Al, tell 'em all you know.  It won't take long."
> Al Smith: "I'll tell 'em all we *both* know.  It won't take any longer."
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