NAME
mkstr
—
create an error message file by
massaging C source
SYNOPSIS
mkstr |
[- ] messagefile
prefix file ... |
DESCRIPTION
mkstr
creates files containing error
messages extracted from C source, and restructures the same C source, to
utilize the created error message file. The intent of
mkstr
was to reduce the size of large programs and
reduce swapping (see BUGS section below).
mkstr
processes each of the specified
files, placing a restructured version of the input in
a file whose name consists of the specified prefix and
the original name. A typical usage of mkstr
is
$ mkstr pistrings xx *.c
This command causes all the error messages from the C source files in the current directory to be placed in the file “pistrings” and restructured copies of the sources to be placed in files whose names are prefixed with “xx”.
The options are as follows:
-
- Error messages are placed at the end of the specified
messagefile for recompiling part of a large
mkstr
ed program.
mkstr
finds error messages in the source
by searching for the string `error("'
in the
input stream. Each time it occurs, the C string starting at the
‘"’ is stored in the message file followed by a null
character and a newline character. The new source is restructured with
lseek(2) pointers into the error message file for retrieval.
char efilname = "/usr/lib/pi_strings"; int efil = -1; error(a1, a2, a3, a4) { char buf[256]; if (efil < 0) { efil = open(efilname, 0); if (efil < 0) { oops: perror(efilname); exit 1 ; } } if (lseek(efil, (long) a1, 0) read(efil, buf, 256) <= 0) goto oops; printf(buf, a2, a3, a4); }
SEE ALSO
HISTORY
The mkstr
utility first appeared in
1BSD.
AUTHORS
Bill Joy and Chuck Haley, 1977.
BUGS
mkstr
was intended for the limited
architecture of the PDP 11 family. Very few programs actually use it. The
pascal interpreter, pi, and the
editor, ex(1), are two programs that are built this way. It is not an
efficient method; the error messages should be stored in the program
text.