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(stabs.info)Structures

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Structures
==========

   The encoding of structures in stabs can be shown with an example.

   The following source code declares a structure tag and defines an
instance of the structure in global scope. Then a `typedef' equates the
structure tag with a new type.  Separate stabs are generated for the
structure tag, the structure `typedef', and the structure instance.  The
stabs for the tag and the `typedef' are emitted when the definitions are
encountered.  Since the structure elements are not initialized, the
stab and code for the structure variable itself is located at the end
of the program in the bss section.

     struct s_tag {
       int   s_int;
       float s_float;
       char  s_char_vec[8];
       struct s_tag* s_next;
     } g_an_s;
     
     typedef struct s_tag s_typedef;

   The structure tag has an `N_LSYM' stab type because, like the
enumeration, the symbol has file scope.  Like the enumeration, the
symbol descriptor is `T', for enumeration, structure, or tag type.  The
type descriptor `s' following the `16=' of the type definition narrows
the symbol type to structure.

   Following the `s' type descriptor is the number of bytes the
structure occupies, followed by a description of each structure element.
The structure element descriptions are of the form NAME:TYPE, BIT
OFFSET FROM THE START OF THE STRUCT, NUMBER OF BITS IN THE ELEMENT.

     # 128 is N_LSYM
     .stabs "s_tag:T16=s20s_int:1,0,32;s_float:12,32,32;
             s_char_vec:17=ar1;0;7;2,64,64;s_next:18=*16,128,32;;",128,0,0,0

   In this example, the first two structure elements are previously
defined types.  For these, the type following the `NAME:' part of the
element description is a simple type reference.  The other two structure
elements are new types.  In this case there is a type definition
embedded after the `NAME:'.  The type definition for the array element
looks just like a type definition for a stand-alone array.  The
`s_next' field is a pointer to the same kind of structure that the
field is an element of.  So the definition of structure type 16
contains a type definition for an element which is a pointer to type 16.

   If a field is a static member (this is a C++ feature in which a
single variable appears to be a field of every structure of a given
type) it still starts out with the field name, a colon, and the type,
but then instead of a comma, bit position, comma, and bit size, there
is a colon followed by the name of the variable which each such field
refers to.

   If the structure has methods (a C++ feature), they follow the
non-method fields; see Note: Cplusplus.