Re: [pcre-dev] Omitting DFA engine

Top Page
Delete this message
Author: Philip Hazel
Date:  
To: Jean-Christophe Deschamps
CC: pcre-dev
Subject: Re: [pcre-dev] Omitting DFA engine
On Tue, 25 May 2010, Jean-Christophe Deschamps wrote:

>    Hi,
>    My context is embedding PCRE into the core of a Windows scripting
>    language (AutoIt).
>    Our developpers have PCRE working for years, but they didn't include
>    UCP support.  The debate is about the increased executable size.
>    Since we have absolutely no use of the DFA engine, is it harmless to
>    completely empty the pcre-dfa-exec() function and get rid of all other
>    code in pcre_dfa_exec.c ?  Keeping things this way would minimize
>    changes to building process.


Sure. If you aren't using it, there's not reason to include it. I don't
understand how Windows works, but in other operating systems when you
link an application with a static library, only those functions that you
actually use get called in. Having pcre_exec() and pcre_dfa_exec() in
separate modules is supposed to ensure this. (In the very first releases
of PCRE, when there were no "optional" functions, all the code was in
one module. But it was a lot smaller!)

If you can't achieve the omission automatically, can you not just link
your application with the appropriate PCRE object files, but omitting
pcre_dfa_exec()? In a Unix environment I'd just include those .o files
that held the functions I wanted, bypassing the pre-linked library.
(This is the way it was done when PCRE was embedded in Exim.)

Anyway, however you do it, it should work.

Philip

--
Philip Hazel