| MKSTR(1) | General Commands Manual | MKSTR(1) | 
mkstr —
| mkstr | [ -] messagefile
      prefix file ... | 
mkstr 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 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:
-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 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) {
oops:
			perror(efilname);
			exit 1 ;
		}
	}
	if (lseek(efil, a1, 0) < 0 || read(efil, buf, 256) <= 0)
		goto oops;
	printf(buf, a2, a3, a4);
}
mkstr appeared in 1BSD.
mkstr 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.
| June 6, 1993 | NetBSD 10.0 |