C obfuscator

[Don Libes]

In article <12573 at netcom.UUCP> ergo at netcom.UUCP (Isaac Rabinovitch) writes:
>steve at taumet.COM (Stephen Clamage) writes:
>>Well, "honi soit qui mal y pense", to you.  There are plenty of
>>legitimate reasons for obfuscating code.  Why do you assume Mr Loewenstern
>>has only evil intentions?  Surely you don't have to jump all over him
>>until you find out.
>
>Such as?

... a useful way to distribute commercial products for multiple
platforms.  Instead of dozens of binaries, just distribute one source
and let the buyer compile.

For example, page 18 of this month's C Users Journal has an
advertisement for a lint that comes in "shrouded source form" that is
K&R and ANSI compatible, and which compiles on UNIX, DOS, VMS, VM/MVS,
and several other operating systems.  The vendor has covered 99% of
the market with a single distribution.

Not only is this clever, but certain #defines can be left unshrouded
so that you have a little more control than if you just had binaries.

Incidentally, this practice has been around for years.

Don Libes          libes at cme.nist.gov      ...!uunet!cme-durer!libes