executable sizes

[John (_You_ hide, they seek.) Mackin <john@civil.su.oz.au>]

    > What's worse, es is as big as itcsh on this machine, and almost as big
    > as csh.

    AAAIGH!  i hadn't realized it was that bad.  hopefully, when we get
    a chance, we'll be able to get the size down.  i'm not making
    promises, though.

Some hard data: these sizes are for a DECstation (MIPS chip) running
Ultrix 4.2.

: g;; size */^(rc es)
text    data    bss     dec     hex
90112   16384   3792    110288  1aed0   rc-try/rc
167936  28672   1344    197952  30540   0.67/es

The text size does seem to be fairly out of control.  (These were both
compiled with gcc -g and no -O.)  For comparison, but note that these
were compiled with DEC cc:

: g;; size /bin/sh /usr/bin/sh5 /bin/csh
text    data    bss     dec     hex
36864   4096    1616    42576   a650    /bin/sh
131072  24576   35264   190912  2e9c0   /usr/bin/sh5
221184  28672   39824   289680  46b90   /bin/csh

sh is a very old version, with no functions and all the traditional bugs.
sh5 is from System Vile R3, and has functions (and all-new bugs :).
I don't doubt that the csh is an older version and that the Latest
and `Greatest' one would be even bigger.

If the garbage collector is the problem, well, there's lots of great
research been going on in that area.  I can probably dig out a bibliography
if it's wanted.

OK,
John.