MKSTR(1) BSD General Commands Manual MKSTR(1)NAMEmkstr — create an error message file by massaging C source
SYNOPSISmkstr [-] messagefile prefix file ...
DESCRIPTION
The mkstr utility 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).
The mkstr utility 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.
Options:
- Error messages are placed at the end of the specified message
file for recompiling part of a large mkstred program.
The mkstr utility 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 new-line 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)
err(1, "%s", efilname);
}
if (lseek(efil, (off_t)a1, SEEK_SET) < 0 ||
read(efil, buf, 256) <= 0)
err(1, "%s", efilname);
printf(buf, a2, a3, a4);
}
SEE ALSOxstr(1), lseek(2)HISTORY
A mkstr utility appeared in 3.0BSD.
BUGS
The mkstr utility was intended for the limited architecture of the PDP 11
family. Very few programs actually use it. The Pascal interpreter,
pi(1) 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.
BSD June 6, 1993 BSD