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(bfd.info)Symbols

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Symbols
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   BFD tries to maintain as much symbol information as it can when it
moves information from file to file. BFD passes information to
applications though the `asymbol' structure. When the application
requests the symbol table, BFD reads the table in the native form and
translates parts of it into the internal format. To maintain more than
the information passed to applications, some targets keep some
information "behind the scenes" in a structure only the particular back
end knows about. For example, the coff back end keeps the original
symbol table structure as well as the canonical structure when a BFD is
read in. On output, the coff back end can reconstruct the output symbol
table so that no information is lost, even information unique to coff
which BFD doesn't know or understand. If a coff symbol table were read,
but were written through an a.out back end, all the coff specific
information would be lost. The symbol table of a BFD is not necessarily
read in until a canonicalize request is made. Then the BFD back end
fills in a table provided by the application with pointers to the
canonical information.  To output symbols, the application provides BFD
with a table of pointers to pointers to `asymbol's. This allows
applications like the linker to output a symbol as it was read, since
the "behind the scenes" information will be still available.

Reading Symbols

Writing Symbols

Mini Symbols

typedef asymbol

symbol handling functions