linker behaviour for sections having flags SHF_MERGE/SHF_STRINGS

["shankarke at gmail dot com" <shankarke at gmail dot com>]

Hi,

I was trying to understand the linker behaviour when sections have
SHF_MERGE/SHF_STRINGS property set.

Below are the test cases :-

merge_test.s
--------------

        .section .rodata.str,"aMS","progbits",1
.LC0:
        .asciz  "abc"
.LC1:
        .asciz  "c"
        .text
        .global _start
_start:
        .long   .LC0
.LT0:
        .long   .LC1
        .long   .LC0-.LT0
        .long   .LC1-.LT0

$ readelf -p 5 merge_test.o

String dump of section '.rodata.str':
  [     0]  abc
  [     4]  c

$ ld merge_test.o
$ readelf -p 2 a.out

String dump of section '.rodata':
  [     0]  abc

$gold merge_test.o
$ readelf -p 2 a.out

String dump of section '.rodata':
  [     0]  abc
  [     4]  c

Question :-
Why is the difference ?


Case 2
----------

merge_test.s
--------------
        .section .rodata.str,"aM","progbits",3
.LC0:
        .asciz  "abc"
.LC1:
        .asciz  "abc"
.LC2:
        .asciz  "cde"
.LC3:
        .asciz  "cde"
        .text
        .global _start
_start:
        .long   .LC0
.LT0:
        .long   .LC1
        .long   .LC0-.LT0
        .long   .LC1-.LT0

$ ld merge_test.o
$ readelf -p 2 a.out
String dump of section '.rodata':
  [     0]  abc
  [     4]  abc
  [     8]  cde
  [     c]  cde

Question :-

Isnt that the behaviour to expect abc, cde in the output

Case 3
---------
$ cat merge_test.s
        .section .rodata.str,"aMS","progbits",2
.LC0:
        .asciz  "ab"
.LC1:
        .asciz  "ab"
        .text
        .global _start
_start:
        .long   .LC0
.LT0:
        .long   .LC1
        .long   .LC0-.LT0
        .long   .LC1-.LT0

$readelf -p 5 merge_test.o
String dump of section '.rodata.str':
  [     0]  ab
  [     3]  ab

$gold merge_test.o
gold: warning: merge_test.o: last entry in mergeable string section
'.rodata.str' not null terminated

$ld merge_test.o
(no error)

What is the linker expecting here ?

Other Questions:-

1) Are there documents that describe the behaviour when such
SHF_STRINGS/SHF_MERGE is set ?
2) Why is there a difference when I specify sh_entsize with sections having
SHF_STRINGS/SHF_MERGE flags ?

Thanks

Shankar Easwaran




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