Red Hat ENTERPRISE LINUX 3 - USING BINUTILS Manual

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3

Using binutils, the Gnu Binary

Utilities

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3: Using binutils, the Gnu Binary Utilities

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Table of Contents

1. Introduction..................................................................................................................................... 1

2. ar....................................................................................................................................................... 3

2.1. Controlling aron the Command Line................................................................................ 3

2.2. Controlling arwith a Script ............................................................................................... 6

3. nm..................................................................................................................................................... 9

4. objcopy........................................................................................................................................... 13

5. objdump......................................................................................................................................... 21

6. ranlib .............................................................................................................................................. 27

7. size .................................................................................................................................................. 29

8. strings............................................................................................................................................. 31

9. strip................................................................................................................................................. 33

10. c++ﬁlt ........................................................................................................................................... 35

11. addr2line ...................................................................................................................................... 37

12. nlmconv ........................................................................................................................................ 39

13. windres ......................................................................................................................................... 41

14. Create ﬁles needed to build and use DLLs ............................................................................... 45

15. readelf........................................................................................................................................... 49

16. Selecting the Target System ....................................................................................................... 53

16.1. Target Selection.............................................................................................................. 53

16.1.1. objdumpTarget ............................................................................................... 53

16.1.2. objcopyand stripInput Target .................................................................... 53

16.1.3. objcopyand stripOutput Target.................................................................. 53

16.1.4. nm,size, and stringsTarget........................................................................ 54

16.2. Architecture Selection.................................................................................................... 54

16.2.1. objdumpArchitecture ..................................................................................... 54

16.2.2. objcopy,nm,size,stringsArchitecture ................................................... 54

17. Reporting Bugs............................................................................................................................ 55

17.1. Have You Found a Bug? ................................................................................................ 55

17.2. How to Report Bugs....................................................................................................... 55

A. GNU Free Documentation License............................................................................................. 59

A.1. ADDENDUM: How to use this License for your documents......................................... 63

Index................................................................................................................................................... 65

Chapter 1.

Introduction

This brief manual contains documentation for the gnu binary utilities (collectively version

2.14.90.0.4):

This document is distributed under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. A copy of the

license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License".

2 Chapter 1. Introduction

Chapter 2.

ar [-]p[mod [relpos] [count]] archive [member...]

ar -M [



mri-script ]

The gnu ar program creates, modiﬁes, and extracts from archives. An archive is a single ﬁle holding

a collection of other ﬁles in a structure that makes it possible to retrieve the original individual ﬁles

(called members of the archive).

The original ﬁles’ contents, mode (permissions), timestamp, owner, and group are preserved in the

archive, and can be restored on extraction.

gnu ar can maintain archives whose members have names of any length; however, depending on how

ar is conﬁgured on your system, a limit on member-name length may be imposed for compatibility

with archive formats maintained with other tools. If it exists, the limit is often 15 characters (typical

of formats related to a.out) or 16 characters (typical of formats related to coff).

ar is considered a binary utility because archives of this sort are most often used as libraries holding

commonly needed subroutines.

ar creates an index to the symbols deﬁned in relocatable object modules in the archive when you

specify the modiﬁer s. Once created, this index is updated in the archive whenever ar makes a change

to its contents (save for the qupdate operation). An archive with such an index speeds up linking to

the library, and allows routines in the library to call each other without regard to their placement in

the archive.

You may use nm -s or nm -print-armap to list this index table. If an archive lacks the table, another

form of ar called ranlib can be used to add just the table.

gnu ar is designed to be compatible with two different facilities. You can control its activity using

command-line options, like the different varieties of ar on Unix systems; or, if you specify the single

command-line option -M, you can control it with a script supplied via standard input, like the MRI

"librarian" program.

2.1. Controlling aron the Command Line

ar [-X32_64] [-]p[mod [relpos] [count]] archive [member...]

When you use ar in the Unix style, ar insists on at least two arguments to execute: one keyletter

specifying the operation (optionally accompanied by other keyletters specifying modiﬁers), and the

archive name to act on.

Most operations can also accept further member arguments, specifying particular ﬁles to operate on.

gnu ar allows you to mix the operation code pand modiﬁer ﬂags mod in any order, within the ﬁrst

command-line argument.

If you wish, you may begin the ﬁrst command-line argument with a dash.

The pkeyletter speciﬁes what operation to execute; it may be any of the following, but you must

specify only one of them:

4 Chapter 2. ar

Delete modules from the archive. Specify the names of modules to be deleted as member. . . ; the

archive is untouched if you specify no ﬁles to delete.

If you specify the vmodiﬁer, ar lists each module as it is deleted.

Use this operation to move members in an archive.

The ordering of members in an archive can make a difference in how programs are linked using

the library, if a symbol is deﬁned in more than one member.

If no modiﬁers are used with m, any members you name in the member arguments are moved to

the end of the archive; you can use the a,b, or imodiﬁers to move them to a speciﬁed place

instead.

Print the speciﬁed members of the archive, to the standard output ﬁle. If the vmodiﬁer is speci-

ﬁed, show the member name before copying its contents to standard output.

If you specify no member arguments, all the ﬁles in the archive are printed.

Quick append; Historically, add the ﬁles member. . . to the end of archive, without checking

for replacement.

The modiﬁers a,b, and ido not affect this operation; new members are always placed at the end

of the archive.

The modiﬁer vmakes ar list each ﬁle as it is appended.

Since the point of this operation is speed, the archive’s symbol table index is not updated, even

if it already existed; you can use ar s or ranlib explicitly to update the symbol table index.

However, too many different systems assume quick append rebuilds the index, so gnu ar imple-

ments qas a synonym for r.

Insert the ﬁles member. . . into archive (with replacement). This operation differs from qin

that any previously existing members are deleted if their names match those being added.

If one of the ﬁles named in member. . . does not exist, ar displays an error message, and leaves

undisturbed any existing members of the archive matching that name.

By default, new members are added at the end of the ﬁle; but you may use one of the modiﬁers

a,b, or ito request placement relative to some existing member.

The modiﬁer vused with this operation elicits a line of output for each ﬁle inserted, along with

one of the letters aor rto indicate whether the ﬁle was appended (no old member deleted) or

replaced.

Display a table listing the contents of archive, or those of the ﬁles listed in member. . . that are

present in the archive. Normally only the member name is shown; if you also want to see the

modes (permissions), timestamp, owner, group, and size, you can request that by also specifying

the vmodiﬁer.

If you do not specify a member, all ﬁles in the archive are listed.

Chapter 2. ar 5

If there is more than one ﬁle with the same name (say, fie) in an archive (say b.a), ar t b.a

fie lists only the ﬁrst instance; to see them all, you must ask for a complete listing--in our

example, ar t b.a.

Extract members (named member) from the archive. You can use the vmodiﬁer with this opera-

tion, to request that ar list each name as it extracts it.

If you do not specify a member, all ﬁles in the archive are extracted.

A number of modiﬁers (mod) may immediately follow the pkeyletter, to specify variations on an

operation’s behavior:

Add new ﬁles after an existing member of the archive. If you use the modiﬁer a, the name

of an existing archive member must be present as the relpos argument, before the archive

speciﬁcation.

Add new ﬁles before an existing member of the archive. If you use the modiﬁer b, the name

of an existing archive member must be present as the relpos argument, before the archive

speciﬁcation. (same as i).

Create the archive. The speciﬁed archive is always created if it did not exist, when you request

an update. But a warning is issued unless you specify in advance that you expect to create it, by

using this modiﬁer.

Truncate names in the archive. gnu ar will normally permit ﬁle names of any length. This will

cause it to create archives which are not compatible with the native ar program on some systems.

If this is a concern, the fmodiﬁer may be used to truncate ﬁle names when putting them in the

archive.

Insert new ﬁles before an existing member of the archive. If you use the modiﬁer i, the name

of an existing archive member must be present as the relpos argument, before the archive

speciﬁcation. (same as b).

This modiﬁer is accepted but not used.

Uses the count parameter. This is used if there are multiple entries in the archive with the same

name. Extract or delete instance count of the given name from the archive.

Preserve the original dates of members when extracting them. If you do not specify this modiﬁer,

ﬁles extracted from the archive are stamped with the time of extraction.

Use the full path name when matching names in the archive. gnu ar can not create an archive

with a full path name (such archives are not POSIX complaint), but other archive creators can.

6 Chapter 2. ar

This option will cause gnu ar to match ﬁle names using a complete path name, which can be

convenient when extracting a single ﬁle from an archive created by another tool.

Write an object-ﬁle index into the archive, or update an existing one, even if no other change is

made to the archive. You may use this modiﬁer ﬂag either with any operation, or alone. Running

ar s on an archive is equivalent to running ranlib on it.

Do not generate an archive symbol table. This can speed up building a large library in several

steps. The resulting archive can not be used with the linker. In order to build a symbol table, you

must omit the Smodiﬁer on the last execution of ar, or you must run ranlib on the archive.

Normally, ar r. . . inserts all ﬁles listed into the archive. If you would like to insert only those of

the ﬁles you list that are newer than existing members of the same names, use this modiﬁer. The

umodiﬁer is allowed only for the operation r(replace). In particular, the combination qu is not

allowed, since checking the timestamps would lose any speed advantage from the operation q.

This modiﬁer requests the verbose version of an operation. Many operations display additional

information, such as ﬁlenames processed, when the modiﬁer vis appended.

This modiﬁer shows the version number of ar.

ar ignores an initial option spelt -X32_64, for compatibility with AIX. The behaviour produced by

this option is the default for gnu ar.ar does not support any of the other -X options; in particular, it

does not support -X32 which is the default for AIX ar.

2.2. Controlling arwith a Script

ar -M [



script ]

If you use the single command-line option -M with ar, you can control its operation with a rudimen-

tary command language. This form of ar operates interactively if standard input is coming directly

from a terminal. During interactive use, ar prompts for input (the prompt is AR



), and continues

executing even after errors. If you redirect standard input to a script ﬁle, no prompts are issued, and

ar abandons execution (with a nonzero exit code) on any error.

The ar command language is not designed to be equivalent to the command-line options; in fact,

it provides somewhat less control over archives. The only purpose of the command language is to

ease the transition to gnu ar for developers who already have scripts written for the MRI "librarian"

program.

The syntax for the ar command language is straightforward:

•Commands are recognized in upper or lower case; for example, LIST is the same as list. In the

following descriptions, commands are shown in upper case for clarity.

•A single command may appear on each line; it is the ﬁrst word on the line.

•Empty lines are allowed, and have no effect.

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