Save Space in Executable Files with strip

Warning!	After you compile () and debug a program, there's a part of the executable binary that you can delete to save disk space. The strip command does the job. Note that once you strip a file, you can't use a symbolic debugger like dbx on it!

Here's an example. I'll compile a C program and list it. Then I'll strip it and list it again. How much space you save depends on several factors, but you'll almost always save something.

-s	% `cc -o echoerr echoerr.c` % `ls -ls echoerr` 52 -rwxr-xr-x 1 jerry 24706 Nov 18 15:49 echoerr % `strip echoerr` % `ls -ls echoerr` 36 -rwxr-xr-x 1 jerry 16656 Nov 18 15:49 echoerr

If you know that you want a file stripped when you compile it, use cc with its -s option. If you use ld-say, in a makefile ()- use the -s option there.

Here's a shell script named stripper that finds all the unstripped executable files in your bin directory () and strips them. It's a quick way to save space on your account. (The same script, searching the whole filesystem, will save even more space for system administrators - but watch out for unusual filenames ()):

xargs	#! /bin/sh skipug="! -perm -4000 ! -perm -2000" # SKIP SETUID, SETGID FILES find $HOME/bin -type f \( -perm -0100 $skipug \) -print \| xargs file \| sed -n '/executable .not stripped/s/:`[TAB]`.//p' \| xargs -t strip

 xargs

#! /bin/sh skipug="! -perm -4000 ! -perm -2000" # SKIP SETUID, SETGID FILES find $HOME/bin -type f \( -perm -0100 $skipug \) -print | xargs file | sed -n '/executable .*not stripped/s/:[TAB].*//p' | xargs -t strip

The find () finds all executable files that aren't setuid or setgid () and runs file () to get a description of each. The sed command skips shell scripts and other files that can't be stripped. sed searches for lines from file like:

/usr/local/bin/xemacs:[TAB]xxx... executable xxx... not stripped

with the word "executable" followed by "not stripped"-sed removes the colon, tab, and description, then passes the filename to strip.

- JP