NetNews Offline 2/NetNews Offline Volume 2.iso/news/comp/lang/c++-part2/14818

Internet Message Format | 1996-08-05 | 1.7 KB

Path: uwm.edu!caen!usenet
From: Jonathan Mayer <[e-mail]>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Subject: Optimizing Const Strings
Date: Mon, 01 Apr 1996 23:46:34 -0500
Organization: University of Michigan Engineering, Ann Arbor
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
NNTP-Posting-Host: swallow.eecs.umich.edu
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Mailer: Mozilla 2.0 (X11; I; SunOS 4.1.3_U1 sun4m)

If I have an include file with a bunch of strings
in it:

    typedef const char const * ConstStr;
    ConstStr strA = "aaa";
    ConstStr strB = "bbb";
    ConstStr strC = "ccc";

And a program that uses only ONE of the aforementioned
strings, all of the C-compilers I've tested (CSet++ and
GCC) compile all three of the const strings into my
program, even though only one of them was used.

Is there any way I can define these strings so that the
linker will refuse to link an unused string?

(think: an include file listing lots of possible error
messages, but a C++ program that only uses some of 'em).

Back in the bad old C days, there was no problem having
a bunch of #define'd strings, since only the utilized
strings got instantiated in the program.  However,
since I'm trying to be typesafe ... shouldn't there
by a typesafe way to replicate this functionality in C++?
Is there a trick I've missed?

Or it is a simple matter of: I'm declaring my data types
correctly, but I'm expecting too much intelligence from
the optimizer/linker?

Sigh.  Want my cake and eating it too.

Please e-mail me replies ... USENET is too big and scary for me.

Thanks,
Jonathan. <[e-mail]>
-------------------------- sig free -------------------------