ranlib and ``ucb''

[guy at sun.UUCP]

> In article <4976 at sun.uucp> guy at sun.uucp (Guy Harris) writes:
> >...  (It's not perfect; if you copy an archive file, you have to do
> >"ar ts <archive> >/dev/null" to reconstruct the table of symbols.  ...
> 
> I know that Guy is seldom mistaken, but I don't understand this at all.

Seldom, maybe, but not never.  See subsequent article.

> I believe that the UNIX System V linker "ld" pays no attention to the
> mod-time of the library, so it doesn't have the problem that 4BSD has
> with copied archive files.

(Or V7, if you managed to discover "ranlib" and use it; it's there, but
undocumented.)  Yes, this is correct; since "ar" always regenerates the table
of symbols, "ld" assumes that if it exists it's always up-to-date.
-- 
	Guy Harris
	{ihnp4, decvax, seismo, decwrl, ...}!sun!guy
	guy at sun.com (or guy at sun.arpa)