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From: steve@nuchat.UUCP (Steve Nuchia)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards,comp.lang.c,comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: New feature of Ultrix C compilers
Message-ID: <345@nuchat.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 30-Sep-87 02:35:07 EDT
Article-I.D.: nuchat.345
Posted: Wed Sep 30 02:35:07 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 1-Oct-87 05:50:01 EDT
References: <867@sask.UUCP> <6473@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Organization: Public Access - Houston, Tx
Lines: 25
Keywords: VAX C
Summary: beware the symbol table
Xref: mnetor comp.unix.wizards:4580 comp.lang.c:4640 comp.unix.questions:4325

In article <6473@brl-smoke.ARPA>, gwyn@brl-smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn ) writes:
> In article <867@sask.UUCP> coleman@sask.UUCP (Geoff Coleman @ College of Engineering) writes:
> >The new executables were ~2.5 times the size of the old one. 
> 
> You didn't provide much information -- It would have been helpful
> to know if the size increase was in the .text PSECT or .data.

Indeed.  We don't even know for sure that it was any of the above.

The first source for that kind of expansion that pops into my
head is the symbol table.  If you're stripping the binaries
before comparing them this idea is all washed up; otherwise
the new compiler may be trying to do you a favor by including
more useful debugging info in the symbol table.  Or it might
be broken and not leaving out all the useless stuff it should.

The next most likely cause is rampant dependancies in the library.
To track this down you need to run nm (with appropriate incantations)
and see how much of the bloat is your code and how much is
library expansion of one form or another.
-- 
Steve Nuchia			Of course I'm respectable!  I'm old!
{soma,academ}!uhnix1		Politicians, ugly buildings, and whores
!nuchat!steve			all get respectable if they last long enough.
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