gcc: how to optimize out dead strings?

[Peter Samuelson]

[not subscribed to gcc-help, please cc, no pun intended]

gcc is pretty good at optimizing out dead code, but what about dead
string constants?

  void foo(int x)
  {
    if (0)
      printf("bar");
  }

As of 2.95.2 on i386-linux{-gnu(:}, the constant "bar\0" still takes up
unwanted space in my object file.  Any way to get rid of it at compile
time?  (cpp is not an option.)

Oh, by the way, the same applies to static variables.  Dead static
variables are bad too.

Thanks,
Peter