rde@ukc.ac.uk (R.D.Eager) (02/13/86)
[food for line eater]
Some people may have seen the article about the /E switch in LINK
although it may not have come to this newsgroup. Not quite sure where it
came from, but basically it said that there was an undocumented switch
in LINK, the /E switch (actually, that's the minimum abbreviation; its
full name is EXEPACK). Apparently it does much the same job as the
EXEPACK utility that comes with version 4 of the assembler; it
compresses uninitialised data areas and grafts in a bit of code to
expand them again at run time. Sure makes a difference on some
files! For example, version 2.27 of MS-Kermit shrinks (the .EXE file
that is) from 84K to 35K approx (but then there are some enormous data
areas for screen saving). Version 2.28 of MS-Kermit claims space
dynamically so the saving won't be as dramatic. The time taken to do the
expansion at the start of execution is a *lot* less than the time taken
to load 50K of zeros off a floppy.
This switch is not present in version 3.00 of the linker (came with the
3.00 assembler) but it is in version 3.02 of the linker (came with
version 1.0 of QuickBasic).
Incidentally, both 3.00 and 3.02 have a handy switch called /HELP
(abbreviation at least /HE) which just summarises switches and
exits. There is also a /WINDOWS switch; no idea what it does though.
--
Bob Eager
rde@ukc.UUCP
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