Re: [patch] Fix readelf display of 8-byte values

[nick clifton <nickc at redhat dot com>]

Hi Cary,

> In binutils/dwarf.c, read_and_display_attr_value(), the handling of
> ref8 and data8 forms uses dwarf_vmatoa for the first 4 bytes, but uses
> printf to format the second 4 bytes:

> Is this an oversight, or intentional?

I think that this is an oversight.

> A patch for what I've suggested is attached. Comments?

I like the patch apart from two small issues:

 * The new function dwarf_vmatoa64() returns a pointer to a statically 
scoped buffer.  This is a dangerous practice and will lead to problems 
if it is invoked more than once within a given statement.  It would be 
better to fill in a buffer provided to the function, or to have multiple 
buffers (ala dwarf_vmatoa), or at least to have a warning comment at the 
start of the function.

* Since byte_get_high() and byte_get_low() are always called as a pair, 
and in sequence, why not just replace them with a single function, (eg 
byte_get64) which fills in both values ?

Cheers
  Nick