Why is the file /bin/false so large?

[Sandy Harris]

On 2/9/10, Chris Jones <jonesc at hep.phy.cam.ac.uk> wrote:

>  I'm also not sure what the concern is over the size of /bin/false, but
>  I'm willing to bet those that know best have made it as optimal as
>  possible, and fiddling will only cause problems...

I tested by writing a C one-liner that just does exit(~0) ;

Whether or not I #include <stdio.h>, it comes out just
under 10 K bytes.

This is for Xubuntu 9.10 on an Intel Core 2 box,
with the default install of gcc, and no special
optimisation options.

/bin/false and /bin/true are each 35216 bytes.