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Member "mysql-4.0.27/strings/README" of archive mysql-4.0.27-win-src.zip:

    1 File   : README
    2 Author : Richard A. O'Keefe.
    3 Updated: 30 April 1984
    4 Purpose: Explain the new strings package.
    5 
    6     The UNIX string libraries (described in the string(3) manual page)
    7 differ from UNIX to UNIX (e.g. strtok is not in V7 or 4.1bsd).  Worse,
    8 the sources are not in the public domain, so that if there is a string
    9 routine which is nearly what you want but not quite you can't  take  a
   10 copy  and  modify it.  And of course C programmers on non-UNIX systems
   11 are at the mercy of their supplier.
   12 
   13     This package was designed to let me do reasonable things with  C's
   14 strings  whatever UNIX (V7, PaNiX, UX63, 4.1bsd) I happen to be using.
   15 Everything in the System III manual is here and does just what the  S3
   16 manual  says  it does.  There are also lots of new goodies.  I'm sorry
   17 about the names, but the routines do have to work  on  asphyxiated-at-
   18 birth  systems  which  truncate identifiers.  The convention is that a
   19 routine is called
   20  str [n] [c] <operation>
   21 If there is an "n", it means that the function takes an (int) "length"
   22 argument, which bounds the number of characters to be moved or  looked
   23 at.  If the function has a "set" argument, a "c" in the name indicates
   24 that  the complement of the set is used.  Functions or variables whose
   25 names start with _ are support routines which aren't really meant  for
   26 general  use.  I don't know what the "p" is doing in "strpbrk", but it
   27 is there in the S3 manual so it's here too.  "istrtok" does not follow
   28 this rule, but with 7 letters what can you do?
   29 
   30     I have included new versions of atoi(3) and atol(3) as well.  They
   31 use a new primitive str2int, which takes a pair of bounds and a radix,
   32 and does much more thorough checking than the normal atoi and atol do.
   33 The result returned by atoi & atol is valid if and only if errno == 0.
   34 There is also an output conversion routine int2str, with itoa and ltoa
   35 as interface macros.  Only after writing int2str did I notice that the
   36 str2int routine has no provision for unsigned numbers.  On reflection,
   37 I don't greatly care.   I'm afraid that int2str may depend on your "C"
   38 compiler in unexpected ways.  Do check the code with -S.
   39 
   40     Several of these routines have "asm" inclusions conditional on the
   41 VaxAsm option.  These insertions can make the routines which have them
   42 quite a bit faster, but there is a snag.  The VAX architects, for some
   43 reason best known to themselves and their therapists, decided that all
   44 "strings" were shorter than 2^16 bytes.  Even when the length operands
   45 are in 32-bit registers, only 16 bits count.  So the "asm" versions do
   46 not work for long strings.  If you can guarantee that all your strings
   47 will be short, define VaxAsm in the makefile, but in general, and when
   48 using other machines, do not define it.
   49 
   50     To use this library, you need the "strings.a" library file and the
   51 "strings.h" and "ctypes.h" header files.  The other header  files  are
   52 for compiling the library itself, though if you are hacking extensions
   53 you  may  find  them useful.  General users really shouldn't see them.
   54 I've defined a few macros I find useful in "strings.h"; if you have no
   55 need for "index", "rindex", "streql", and "beql", just edit them  out.
   56 On the 4.1bsd system I am using declaring all these functions 'extern'
   57 does not mean that they will all be loaded; but only the ones you use.
   58 When using lesser systems you may find it necessary to break strings.h
   59 up, or you could get by with just adding "extern" declarations for the
   60 functions you want as you need them.  Many of these functions have the
   61 same names as functions in the "standard C library", by design as this
   62 is a replacement/reimplementation of part of that library.  So you may
   63 have to talk the loader into loading this library first.   Again, I've
   64 found no problems on 4.1bsd.
   65 
   66     You may wonder at my failure to provide manual pages for this code.
   67 For the things in V7, 4.?, or SIII, you should be able to use whichever
   68 manual page came with that system,  and anything I might write would be
   69 so like it as to raise suspicions of violating AT&T copyrights.  In the
   70 sources you will find comments which provide far more documentation for
   71 these routines than AT&T ever provided for their strings stuff,  I just
   72 don't happen to have put it in nroff -man form.   Had I done so, the .3
   73 files would have outbulked the .c files!
   74 
   75     These files are in the public domain.  This includes getopt.c, which
   76 is the work of Henry Spencer, University of Toronto Zoology, who says of
   77 it "None of this software is derived from Bell software. I had no access
   78 to the source for Bell's versions at the time I wrote it.  This software
   79 is hereby explicitly placed in the public domain.  It may  be  used  for
   80 any purpose on any machine by anyone." I would greatly prefer it if *my*
   81 material received no military use.
   82