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  1. <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
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  3. <!-- This file documents the BFD library.
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  21. <title>Symbols (Untitled Document)</title>
  22. <meta name="description" content="Symbols (Untitled Document)">
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  29. <link href="index.html#SEC_Contents" rel="contents" title="Table of Contents">
  30. <link href="BFD-front-end.html#BFD-front-end" rel="up" title="BFD front end">
  31. <link href="Reading-Symbols.html#Reading-Symbols" rel="next" title="Reading Symbols">
  32. <link href="section-prototypes.html#section-prototypes" rel="prev" title="section prototypes">
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  62. <a name="Symbols"></a>
  63. <div class="header">
  64. <p>
  65. Next: <a href="Archives.html#Archives" accesskey="n" rel="next">Archives</a>, Previous: <a href="Sections.html#Sections" accesskey="p" rel="prev">Sections</a>, Up: <a href="BFD-front-end.html#BFD-front-end" accesskey="u" rel="up">BFD front end</a> &nbsp; [<a href="index.html#SEC_Contents" title="Table of contents" rel="contents">Contents</a>][<a href="BFD-Index.html#BFD-Index" title="Index" rel="index">Index</a>]</p>
  66. </div>
  67. <hr>
  68. <a name="Symbols-1"></a>
  69. <h3 class="section">2.7 Symbols</h3>
  70. <p>BFD tries to maintain as much symbol information as it can when
  71. it moves information from file to file. BFD passes information
  72. to applications though the <code>asymbol</code> structure. When the
  73. application requests the symbol table, BFD reads the table in
  74. the native form and translates parts of it into the internal
  75. format. To maintain more than the information passed to
  76. applications, some targets keep some information &ldquo;behind the
  77. scenes&rdquo; in a structure only the particular back end knows
  78. about. For example, the coff back end keeps the original
  79. symbol table structure as well as the canonical structure when
  80. a BFD is read in. On output, the coff back end can reconstruct
  81. the output symbol table so that no information is lost, even
  82. information unique to coff which BFD doesn&rsquo;t know or
  83. understand. If a coff symbol table were read, but were written
  84. through an a.out back end, all the coff specific information
  85. would be lost. The symbol table of a BFD
  86. is not necessarily read in until a canonicalize request is
  87. made. Then the BFD back end fills in a table provided by the
  88. application with pointers to the canonical information. To
  89. output symbols, the application provides BFD with a table of
  90. pointers to pointers to <code>asymbol</code>s. This allows applications
  91. like the linker to output a symbol as it was read, since the &ldquo;behind
  92. the scenes&rdquo; information will be still available.
  93. </p><table class="menu" border="0" cellspacing="0">
  94. <tr><td align="left" valign="top">&bull; <a href="Reading-Symbols.html#Reading-Symbols" accesskey="1">Reading Symbols</a>:</td><td>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td><td align="left" valign="top">
  95. </td></tr>
  96. <tr><td align="left" valign="top">&bull; <a href="Writing-Symbols.html#Writing-Symbols" accesskey="2">Writing Symbols</a>:</td><td>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td><td align="left" valign="top">
  97. </td></tr>
  98. <tr><td align="left" valign="top">&bull; <a href="Mini-Symbols.html#Mini-Symbols" accesskey="3">Mini Symbols</a>:</td><td>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td><td align="left" valign="top">
  99. </td></tr>
  100. <tr><td align="left" valign="top">&bull; <a href="typedef-asymbol.html#typedef-asymbol" accesskey="4">typedef asymbol</a>:</td><td>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td><td align="left" valign="top">
  101. </td></tr>
  102. <tr><td align="left" valign="top">&bull; <a href="symbol-handling-functions.html#symbol-handling-functions" accesskey="5">symbol handling functions</a>:</td><td>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td><td align="left" valign="top">
  103. </td></tr>
  104. </table>
  105. <hr>
  106. <div class="header">
  107. <p>
  108. Next: <a href="Archives.html#Archives" accesskey="n" rel="next">Archives</a>, Previous: <a href="Sections.html#Sections" accesskey="p" rel="prev">Sections</a>, Up: <a href="BFD-front-end.html#BFD-front-end" accesskey="u" rel="up">BFD front end</a> &nbsp; [<a href="index.html#SEC_Contents" title="Table of contents" rel="contents">Contents</a>][<a href="BFD-Index.html#BFD-Index" title="Index" rel="index">Index</a>]</p>
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