XSTR(1)

XSTR(1) 💅✨

okay so bestie, this is the General Commands Manual page for xstr, and it’s giving vintage Unix with a shared-strings glow-up 🦋. Manual name folded in near the top? Done and dusted, no cap.

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🌸 NAME 🌸

xstr — extract strings from C programs to implement shared strings 💖

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

xstr [-cv] [-] [file ...]

💫 DESCRIPTION 💫

The xstr utility maintains a file strings into which strings in component parts of a large program are hashed. These strings are replaced with references to this common area. This serves to implement shared constant strings, most useful if they are also read-only. periodt ✨

🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

The following options are available:

• - — read from the standard input.
• -c — extract the strings from the C source file or the standard input (-), replacing string references by expressions of the form (&xstr[number]) for some number. An appropriate declaration of xstr is prepended to the file. The resulting C text is placed in the file x.c, to then be compiled. The strings from this file are placed in the strings data base if they are not there already. Repeated strings and strings which are suffixes of existing strings do not cause changes to the data base.
• -v — verbose mode.

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After all components of a large program have been compiled, a file xs.c declaring the common xstr space can be created by a command of the form:

xstr

The file xs.c should then be compiled and loaded with the rest of the program. If possible, the array can be made read-only (shared) saving space and swap overhead. iconic resource behavior, honestly 🫶

The xstr utility can also be used on a single file. A command

xstr name

creates files x.c and xs.c as before, without using or affecting any strings file in the same directory. single-file moment, very main character ✨

It may be useful to run xstr after the C preprocessor if any macro definitions yield strings or if there is conditional code which contains strings which may not, in fact, be needed. An appropriate command sequence for running xstr after the C preprocessor is:

cc -E name.c | xstr -c -
cc -c x.c
mv x.o name.o

The xstr utility does not touch the file strings unless new items are added, thus make(1) can avoid remaking xs.o unless truly necessary. make is literally thriving 💛

📁 FILES 📁

• strings — data base of strings
• x.c — massaged C source
• xs.c — C source for definition of array xstr
• /tmp/xs* — temporary file when “xstr name” does not touch strings

👀 SEE ALSO 👀

mkstr(1) 💜

🕰️ HISTORY 🕰️

The xstr command appeared in 3.0BSD. vintage behavior, we love to see it 🎀

💀 BUGS 💀

If a string is a suffix of another string in the data base, but the shorter string is seen first by xstr both strings will be placed in the data base, when just placing the longer one there will do. not the suffix shenanigans, bestie 😭

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xoxo, your Debian girlie 💖 — this page comes from Debian and is dated December 30, 1993. 👑