In
Unix
Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...
,
Plan 9 Plan 9 or Plan Nine may refer to:
Music
* Plan 9 (band), a psychedelic rock band from Rhode Island
* ''Plan 9'', an album by Big Guitars From Memphis with Rick Lindy
* "Plan 9", a song on the 1993 album ''Gorgeous'' by electronica band 808 Stat ...
, and
Unix-like
A Unix-like (sometimes referred to as UN*X or *nix) operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, although not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification. A Unix-li ...
operating system
An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs.
Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ef ...
s, the
strip program removes information from executable binary programs and
object file
An object file is a computer file containing object code, that is, machine code output of an assembler or compiler. The object code is usually relocatable, and not usually directly executable. There are various formats for object files, and the ...
s that is not essential or required for normal and correct
execution
Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the state-sanctioned practice of deliberately killing a person as a punishment for an actual or supposed crime, usually following an authorized, rule-governed process to conclude that t ...
, thus potentially resulting in better performance and sometimes significantly less disk space usage. The resulting file is a stripped binary.
Details
The information removed may consist of debugging and
symbol information; however, the standard leaves the scope of the changes to the binary up to the implementer of the stripping program.
Furthermore, the use of
strip can improve the security of the binary against
reverse engineering
Reverse engineering (also known as backwards engineering or back engineering) is a process or method through which one attempts to understand through deductive reasoning how a previously made device, process, system, or piece of software accompli ...
as it would be comparatively more difficult to analyze a binary without the extra information that would otherwise be removed.
The effect of
strip can be achieved directly by the
linker
Linker or linkers may refer to:
Computing
* Linker (computing), a computer program that takes one or more object files generated by a compiler or generated by an assembler and links them with libraries, generating an executable program or shar ...
. For instance, in
GNU Compiler Collection
The GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) is an optimizing compiler produced by the GNU Project supporting various programming languages, hardware architectures and operating systems. The Free Software Foundation (FSF) distributes GCC as free sof ...
this option is "
-s".
The
GNU Project
The GNU Project () is a free software, mass collaboration project announced by Richard Stallman on September 27, 1983. Its goal is to give computer users freedom and control in their use of their computers and Computer hardware, computing devi ...
ships an implementation of
strip as part of the
GNU Binutils package.
strip has been ported to other operating systems including
Microsoft Windows.
See also
*
Dead code elimination
*
Executable compression
Executable compression is any means of data compression, compressing an executable file and combining the compressed data with decompression code into a single executable. When this compressed executable is executed, the decompression code recre ...
*
List of Unix commands
This is a list of Unix commands as specified by IEEE Std 1003.1-2008, which is part of the Single UNIX Specification (SUS). These commands can be found on Unix operating systems and most Unix-like operating systems.
List
See also
* List of G ...
*
Strings (Unix)
*
Debug symbol
*
Symbol table
References
*
External links
*
*
{{Plan 9 commands
Unix programming tools
Unix SUS2008 utilities
Plan 9 commands