This is the mail archive of the
cygwin
mailing list for the Cygwin project.
Re: The binary "[.exe"
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
According to Buchbinder, Barry (NIH/NIAID) [E] on 3/24/2006 7:59 PM:
>
> "/bin/[ --help" gives a message while "/bin/test --help" is silent.
> (Interestingly, "strings /bin/test.exe" show that "test.exe" contains
> the help message.) "[ --version" give the FSF copyright notice while
> "strings test.exe" does not find one.
And I just traced down this difference. By default, gcc/ld do not strip
out unused functions, if those functions appear in the same .o as
something else that is in use. test.exe and [.exe are compiled from the
same test.c source file (with different #defines to choose which one is
being compiled, and therefore which functions are used), but the overall
executable links in other .o's. The --help text is part of a method in
test.c, so it appears in both executables, even though it is in a dead
code path in test.exe; but the --version text is part of a method linked
in from a different source file version-etc-fsf.c (shared among all the
coreutils), and that .o was not needed to satisfy the linkage of test.exe.
Hence test.exe is smaller in size, and has one but not both strings.
- --
Life is short - so eat dessert first!
Eric Blake ebb9@byu.net
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2.1 (Cygwin)
Comment: Public key at home.comcast.net/~ericblake/eblake.gpg
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
iD8DBQFEJMN684KuGfSFAYARAmXrAJ0RKtje5/F5FfVSIhgrN2VxejLTcgCfRici
x2VhmZs1zMbkEnyLMNNxwss=
=4FwS
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
--
Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple
Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html
Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html
FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/