Texas Instruments TMS320C54x, User Manual

Page: 363 / 469

Section Header Structure
A-9 Common Object File Format
Figure A–3 illustrates how the pointers in a section header would point to the
elements in an object file that are associated with the .text section.
Figure A–3. Section Header Pointers for the .text Section
.text
.text
Section
Header
.text
raw data
.text
relocation information
.text
line-number entries
• • •
0–7 8–11 12–15 16–19 20–23 24–27 28–31 32–33 34–35 36–37 38 39
As Figure A–2 on page A-3 shows, uninitialized sections (created with the
.bss and .usect directives) vary from this format. Although uninitialized
sections have section headers, they have no raw data, relocation information,
or line-number information. They occupy no actual space in the object file.
Therefore, the number of relocation entries, the number of line-number en-
tries, and the file pointers are 0 for an uninitialized section. The header of an
uninitialized section simply tells the linker how much space for variables it
should reserve in the memory map.