MKSTR(1) BSD General Commands Manual MKSTR(1)NAMEmkstr — create an error message file by massaging C source
SYNOPSISmkstr [-] messagefile prefix file ...
DESCRIPTIONmkstr creates files containing error messages extracted from C source,
and restructures the same C source, to use 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 ver‐
sion 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 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 start‐
ing 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) {
oops:
perror(efilname);
exit 1 ;
}
}
if (lseek(efil, a1, 0) < 0 || read(efil, buf, 256) ≤ 0)
goto oops;
printf(buf, a2, a3, a4);
}
SEE ALSOxstr(1), lseek(2)HISTORYmkstr appeared in 3.0BSD.
BUGSmkstr was intended for the limited architecture of the PDP-11 family.
Very few programs actually use it. It is not an efficient method, the
error messages should be stored in the program text.
BSD June 6, 1993 BSD
