Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 10:19:54 +0200 (IST)
From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il>
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To: Cesar Rabak <csrabak AT uol DOT com DOT br>
cc: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
Subject: Re: Strange text in non stripped header files
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On Sun, 11 Mar 2001, Cesar Rabak wrote:

> After compiling a relatevely large source file 267652 bytes, I'm getting
> a strange result when creating programs w/o stripping. Namely in the
> start of the a.out file it is possible to find a part of a text which
> seems to be part of a gxxFAQ.info! The strange text starts at offset
> 0xa8 and goes up to 0x10a7.

I think this is a known problem with current Binutils: the alignment
gap between the end of the stub and COFF header and the beginning of
the executable is filled with random garbage which typically comes
from memory or unused disk space.  (The DJGPP programs' entry point is
at 0x10a8.)

Does that garbage go away if you use stubify to create the .exe
program?

> It doesn't happen when one compiles a 'hello world' type of programm, so
> it may be difficult to reproduce*.

What do you see in that portion of the executable in a hello world
program?