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From: Mikhail Teterin <mi@aldan.algebra.com>
Message-Id: <199811191355.NAA03525@aldan.algebra.com>
Subject: strings in the kernel (was: snprintf() in the kernel)
In-Reply-To: <199811190712.XAA23068@bubba.whistle.com> from Archie Cobbs at "Nov 18, 1998 11:12:24 pm"
To: current@FreeBSD.ORG
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1998 13:55:25 +0000 (GMT)
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Archie Cobbs once stated:

=In fact, the total byte count may even go down due to the several
=instances in the code that are forced to do their own bounds checking
=(the changes to subr_prf.c are minimal).

This reminds me of a marginally related issue:

	strings /kernel | sort -u | wc
	   14409   22343  235606
		vs.
	strings /kernel | wc
	   25522   34130  317264

In other words, there are 11113 duplicate lines in my kernel,
amounting for a total of 91658 bytes. And this does not even include
different strings with huge common sub-strings, such as:

	%s: unable to allocate hardware SCB array.  Failing attach
	%s: unable to allocate targetcmd array.  Failing attach

or

	Data sync error - data auto-reallocated
	Data sync error - data rewritten
	Data sync error - recommend reassignment
	Data sync error - recommend rewrite

It is very nice, that the kernel messages are getting easier to
comprehend every day, and forced to choose, I would probably choose
bloat over unreadabilty.

But may be it is possible to have both? Like, say, a file with
all/most of the strings defined in it (and their lengths, determined
at compile time) and referenced from other files? AFAIK, there are
even automated tools to do that.

This will also be very helpfull to someone trying to translate all
the messages to some other language in the future.

	-mi

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