Re: BFD, alignment of common symbols

[Mikulas Patocka <mikulas at artax dot karlin dot mff dot cuni dot cz>]

> Hi Mikulas,
> 
> : If the symbol is in common section, asymbol->section == &bfd_com_section,
> : asymbol->value contains the size of a symbol and ... where is the
> : alignment?
> 
> First of all, this is only supported for ELF targets.  Other file
> formats do not support alignment of common symbols.
> 
> For ELF, the size of the symbol is placed in the 'size' field and the
> alignment is placed in the 'value' field.  Take a look at
> elf_slurp_symbol_table() in bfd/elfcode.h for an example of this.

Yes, I see. I also looked at bfd_elf_print_symbol - it prints symbol
including an alignment.

The function gets asymbol *symbol and prints

((elf_symbol_type *) symbol)->internal_elf_sym.st_value

as the alignment. Sadly elf_symbol_type is private type not exported in
bfd.h, so there's no way to get it outside bfd library :-(

An ultimate solution - create pipe, use bfd_elf_print_symbol to print the
symbol to pipe, read the pipe and parse numbers :-)

Mikulas