STRIPPED - Check directories for files damaged by TDSTRIP.

Written by D.J. Murdoch for the public domain, May, 1992.

SYNTAX:

  STRIPPED dir

will search the given directory, and any of its subdirectories, for
damaged .EXE files.

DESCRIPTION:

Borland ships a utility called TDSTRIP with its Turbo Debugger.  TDSTRIP
lets you strip the external debugging information out of .EXE or .OBJ
files.  However, version 2.0 (and some later ones) contain a serious
bug:  it damages the header of the .EXE file, setting the "minimum extra
allocation" field to zero.

The extra allocation fields are used by DOS to determine how much memory
to give to your program.  In addition to the amount needed to load the
image of your .EXE file, you'll get at least the minimum allocation and
as much as the maximum allocation, if it's available.  If there's not
enough memory to give you the minimum allocation, DOS will refuse to
load the program.

The extra memory is used in different ways depending on the
compiler/linker, but Turbo Pascal makes typical use of it: uninitialized
static variables, the stack, the overlay buffer, and the heap all reside
there.

If you try to load a TDSTRIP-damaged .EXE file, usually nothing bad will
happen.  You'll have more than the required minimum, and things will be
fine.  However, if memory is very tight, you might have less than the
true minimum, but more than the 0 value that TDSTRIP has put in.  Your
program may be loaded with an initial stack pointer in video memory, or
in an area where there's no memory, or in the middle of a TSR that's
been loaded above it.  You'll quickly crash.

The program STRIPPED is an attempt to detect these damaged files.  It
checks the header, and verifies that the initial stack pointer is going
to fall within the minimum allocation.  If not, it prints the name of
the file, and the amount of free RAM which you'd need to have for it to
actually matter.

STRIPPED doesn't try to fix the .EXE, because there's no way to know
what the true minimum allocation should be; the program may use
overlays, or depend on a certain size of heap. Turbo Pascal 6 source for
STRIPPED is included in this archive, so feel free to attempt fixes if
you feel confident.  A safer approach, if available, is to recompile the
bad .EXE, and not to use TDSTRIP on it.  The EXEMOD program distributed
with some compilers could also be used to repair the damage, if you're
willing to guess at the required size.


SUPPORT:

Support?  Well, comments on STRIPPED should be sent to me at one of the
following addresses.  No guarantee that I'll be able to help though.

  Internet:    dmurdoch@watstat.waterloo.edu
  Fidonet:     DJ Murdoch at 1:249/99.5
  Compuserve:  71631,122
  Postal:      337 Willingdon Ave,       (After June 19, 1992)
               Kingston, Ontario, Canada
               K7L 4J3