[Toybox] Bc Math Library

[Rob Landley]

On 02/16/2018 01:32 PM, Gavin Howard wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> The bc is coming along nicely. I am at the point where I may be ready
> to support the POSIX-required "-l" option
> (http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/bc.html#tag_20_09_04).
> That option requires a bunch of code written in bc itself to be
> included with the program.

In this case "a bunch" is maybe a kilobyte. Not a huge deal.

> The code will be in its own file in the bc repo. However, it needs to
> be converted into C source in some way because as Rob requested, the
> library can only be contained as read-only data in the executable
> itself to make sure there is no outside dependency.

something like (untested):

echo -n '#define BC_L "'
sed 's/["\\]/\\&/h;s/$/\\n\\' bc_l.txt
echo '"'

I actually have a vague todo item to make string plumbing that allows a bunch of
string text to be gzipped and then it would zcat them and grab the Xth
null-termianted string. (I already need this for help text, and busybox has done
something similar forever. It just needs lib/deflate.c to go in first...)

> Here is my question: is the reduction in executable size and
> (possible) faster startup time worth the complexity of the second
> option?

String. Definitely string.

Just get it to work and get me code under the toybox license, I can handle
merging it.

Thanks,

Rob