Proposal for a new applet: strings

[Roberto A. Foglietta]

On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 at 13:18, tito <farmatito at tiscali.it> wrote:
>
> On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 12:00:56 +0200
> "Roberto A. Foglietta" <roberto.foglietta at gmail.com> wrote:

> > >
> > > 1) multiple file handling (a must i would dare to say)
> >
> > Which is not such a problem, after all
> >
> > for i in "$@"; do simply-strings "$i" | sed -e "s/^/$i:/"; done
> >
> > the sed will include also the file name in front of the string which
> > is useful for grepping. However, the single-file limitation brings to
> > personalize the approach:
> >
> > for i in "$@"; do simply-strings "$i" | grep -w "word" && break; done; echo $i
>
> Don't cheat, this change would break other people's scripts.

Other people are not anymore into the scene, since the moment that we
established that reinventing the wheel is not efficient nor useful.


>
> > Yes, strings has a lot of options and also busybox have several
> > options. This is the best critic about proceeding with an integration.
> > I will check if I can put an optimization into bb strings, just for my
> > own curiosity.
>
> This would be far better than reinventing the wheel.
>

Reinventing the wheel is a good way to understand how the wheel works
and improve it. We just concluded that there is no reason to reinvent
the wheel completely. However, the simple-strings can be useful when
its deployment fixes fulfill a void better than replacing a
fundamental system component like busybox which can break future OTA.
In particular, it is fine as a service/rescue/recovery image in which
the space is limited and the full compatibility with strings or
busybox strings is not necessary and for everything else custom
scripts can easily compensate.

About improving busybox strings and more in general its printf
performance, it is about this:

setvbuf(stdout, (char *)stdout_buffer, _IOFBF, BUFSIZE);

Obviously a large static buffer can impact the footprint but as long
as malloc() is used into the busybox - and in its library I remember
there were sanitising wrappers for it - then it would not be such a
big deal to use a dynamically allocated buffer. The tricky aspect is
about the applet forking. A topic that I do not know but I saw an
option "no fork" in the config. I did not even start to see the code,
therefore I am just wondering about.


> >
> > > 3) output compatible with original gnu strings
> > >
> > > > In attachment the new version with the test suite and the benchmark
> > > > suite in the header. The benchmark suite did not change with respect
> > > > to the script file I just sent.
> > > >
> > > > Best regards, R-
> > >
> > > BTW: there still seem to be corner-cases:
> > > list=`find /usr`
> > > for i in $list; do if test -f $i; then  ./strings $i > out1.txt; strings $i > out2.txt; diff -q out1.txt out2.txt; fi; done
> > > Files out1.txt and out2.txt differ
> > > Files out1.txt and out2.txt differ
> > > Files out1.txt and out2.txt differ
> > > Files out1.txt and out2.txt differ
> > >
> > > test is still running....
> >
> > ok, I will do a run. Can you please echo the finenames, instead?
> >
> > for i in $list; do if test -f $i; then  ./strings $i > out1.txt;
> > strings $i > out2.txt; diff -q out1.txt out2.txt >/dev/null || echo
> > $i; fi; done
> >

The version in attachment also solves the rest of the problem that my
/usr could have raised with the previous version.  Moreover, I have
further developed the benchmark and the testing suites. You might find
interesting the new part of the benchmark suite about 'dd' used as an
alternative of /dev/null for giving us a transfer speed. As you can
see, if you wish to do strings on tmpfs then for each different file
you need to copy it into the tmpfs. For this reason, copying in tmpfs
+ 100 strings run on the same file is like cheating <-- you started!
;-)


>
> if you hire me as beta tester....at least you own me a beer if we ever met in person.
>

Sure, you are welcome. I live in Genoa, at the moment - you can easily
find my mobile telephone number by googling my name (well, to be
precise: it is a brand strongly based on my name).

In another context, I saw that there is the policy of paying by paypal
& co. a small amount of money IMHO, it is a very bad marketing policy
which seriously impair the value of a professionist. However, when
someone acts outside its professional sector like - blogging,
zero-hope commercial projects, end-users guides, et similia - then it
is fine to ask, IMHO. As long as it is clear what someone asks.

More in general, my common attitude is to raise and save money to
start my own company and pay people to work for/with me. But everytime
my incoming or my company business is going well, the people around me
go mad and f*ck-up everything without any reasonable way to stop them.
Now, I got quita a clear picture about it but this is definitely
off-topic.

Cheers, R-
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