program size

[David Relson]

Greetings,

Greg noticed this morning that bogofilter's size has grown significantly in 
recent releases.  For various reasons I suspected the lexer code and ran a 
test.  Using the current 0.14.1 source code and the lexer_v3.l file from 
versions 0.13.7.2, 0.13.7.3, 0.14.0, 0.14.0.1, and 0.14.1 I built the three 
executables (bogofilter, bogolexer, and bogoutil) and stripped 
them.  Here's a chart showing file sizes:

        lexer_v3.l lexer_v3.c lexer_v3.o  bogofilter bogolexer bogoutil
01372     8820      277234     189400      241600     190640    29512
01373     8887      819019     522312      573376     525136    29512
01400     9040     1604526    1005644     1056704    1008464    29512
01401     9035     3686763    2279948     2331008    2282320    29512
01410     9027     2245508    1397132     1449920    1398384    29512

Looking at the numbers, it is clear that what's in lexer_v3.l has big 
effects on the generated code (lexer_v3.c), the object file (lexer_v3.o), 
and the resulting executables.

It has been suggested that an alternative to flex might exist.  What do 
y'all know of this subject?  Anybody interested in taking on the task of 
testing alternatives?

David