24.13 Save Space in Executable Files with strip

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 (28.13 ) - use the -s option there.

Here's a shell script named stripper that finds all the unstripped executable files in your bin directory (4.2 ) 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 (9.22 ) ):

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 (17.2 ) finds all executable files that aren't setuid or setgid (24.14 ) and runs file (25.8 ) 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 .