strings in defs.h force recompiles w

[jim at ISM780B.UUCP]

I have a different approach, which avoids the problem of having to have
def.h track strings.c, and of having the name of the string separate from
its text.  strings.c looks like

char NEWS_VERSION[] = "B 2.10.2 9/5/84";
char DFLTSUB[]      = "general,all.general";
char TMAIL[]        = "/usr/ucb/Mail";
char ADMSUB[]       = "general,all.announce";
char PAGE[]         = "/usr/ucb/more";
char NOTIFY[]       = "usenet";
char DFTXMIT[]      = "uux - -r -z %s!rnews < %s";
char UXMIT[]        = "uux -r -z -c %s!rnews '<' %s";
char DFTEDITOR[]    = "vi";

Either declare these in defs.h,

extern char NEWS_VERSION[],
	    DFLTSUB[],
	    ...

or only where needed.  The latter would avoid remaking everything whenever
you add or delete a string.

One thing to watch out for in this scheme or the
strings[n] scheme is that you can't take sizeof the strings.
You also cannot use them as initializers.  But for common use as error
formats or pathnames, this works pretty well.

-- Jim Balter, INTERACTIVE Systems (ima!jim)