Re: missing way to extract data out of data

[Eli Schwartz]

On 3/23/21 4:46 AM, Andreas Schwab wrote:
> On Mär 22 2021, Dale R. Worley wrote:
> 
>> Greg Wooledge <greg@wooledge.org> writes:
>>> Partly true.  seq(1) is a Linux thing, and was never part of any
>>> tradition, until Linux people started doing it.
>>
>> Huh.  I started with Ultrix, and then SunOS, but don't remember learning
>> seq at a later date.
> 
> According to <https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=seq>, seq
> appeared in Version 8 AT&T UNIX.
> 
>> I've never tracked down why, but the Perl executable is a lot smaller
>> than the Bash executable.
> 
> Is it?
> 
> $ size /usr/bin/perl /bin/bash
>    text    data     bss     dec     hex filename
> 2068661   27364     648 2096673  1ffe21 /usr/bin/perl
> 1056850   22188   61040 1140078  11656e /bin/bash
> 
> Of course, a lot of perl is part of loadable modules.

How thoroughly do you want to cheat?

$ size /usr/bin/perl /bin/bash
   text    data     bss     dec     hex filename
   3840     792      16    4648    1228 /usr/bin/perl
 923139   22092   60800 1006031   f59cf /bin/bash
$ du -sh /usr/bin/perl /bin/bash
16K     /usr/bin/perl
932K    /bin/bash

Gosh, how does the perl interpreter define an entire language core in
16kb??? Pure magic.

Naturally, the loadable modules you mention are very significant either way.


$ pacman -Qi bash perl
Name            : bash
Version         : 5.1.004-1
[...]
Installed Size  : 8.19 MiB
[...]
Name            : perl
Version         : 5.32.1-1
[...]
Installed Size  : 57.63 MiB


And, for extras, it turns out most of the size of perl's no-modules
interpreter (that ever so tiny 16kb binary) is in

$ du -sh /usr/lib/perl5/5.32/core_perl/CORE/libperl.so
3.7M    /usr/lib/perl5/5.32/core_perl/CORE/libperl.so
$ size /usr/lib/perl5/5.32/core_perl/CORE/libperl.so
   text    data     bss     dec     hex filename
3604395   77020   25352 3706767  388f8f
/usr/lib/perl5/5.32/core_perl/CORE/libperl.so


Which is indeed much larger than bash (one binary, no libbash.so,
whether to count the separate libreadline.so in my vendor configuration
is debatable).

-- 
Eli Schwartz
Arch Linux Bug Wrangler and Trusted User

OpenPGP_signature
Description: OpenPGP digital signature