From:	gunther DOT ebert AT ixos-leipzig DOT de (Gunther Ebert)
Subject:	Have I found the b17 C++ problem?
9 Dec 1996 16:19:08 -0800 :
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Hi,

I think I have found the c++ problem of b16 and b17
(invalid executable when using exceptions).
If you compile the following simple file

/* hello.cc */
#include <stdio.h>
int main() { printf("Hello, world\n"); return 0; }
/* end of hello.cc */

with exceptions enabled
( gcc -fexceptions -c hello.cc )

you will get an object file with an invalid section
..gcc_except_table

$ objdump --section-headers hello.o

hello.exe:     file format pei-i386

Sections:
Idx Name          Size      VMA       LMA       File off  Algn
  0 .text         00001e00  00401000  00001dac  00000400  2**2
                  CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, CODE
  1 .bss          000001cc  00403000  00000000  00000000  2**2
                  ALLOC
  2 .data         00000200  00404000  000000a8  00002200  2**2
                  CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, DATA
  3 .idata        00000200  00405000  0000012c  00002400  2**2
                  CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, DATA
  4 .stab         00007e00  00406000  00007c20  00002600  2**2
                  CONTENTS, DEBUGGING, NEVER_LOAD
  5 .stabstr      00035000  0040e000  00034e99  0000a400  2**0
                  CONTENTS, DEBUGGING, NEVER_LOAD
  6 .gcc_except_table 00000200  00442e9c  000001b0  0003f49c  2**2
                  CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, CODE

$

The problem is that the Win32 PE format does only support section names
up to 8 characters 

(quoted from the original MS WINNT.H):

#define IMAGE_SIZEOF_SHORT_NAME              8

typedef struct _IMAGE_SECTION_HEADER {
    BYTE    Name[IMAGE_SIZEOF_SHORT_NAME];  <<<<<<<<<<<<<
    union {
            DWORD   PhysicalAddress;
            DWORD   VirtualSize;
    } Misc;
    DWORD   VirtualAddress;
    DWORD   SizeOfRawData;
    DWORD   PointerToRawData;
    DWORD   PointerToRelocations;
    DWORD   PointerToLinenumbers;
    WORD    NumberOfRelocations;
    WORD    NumberOfLinenumbers;
    DWORD   Characteristics;
} IMAGE_SECTION_HEADER, *PIMAGE_SECTION_HEADER;


(quoted from include/coff/i386.h):

/********************** SECTION HEADER **********************/


struct external_scnhdr {
	char		s_name[8];	/* section name			*/
	char		s_paddr[4];	/* physical address, aliased s_nlib */
	char		s_vaddr[4];	/* virtual address		*/
	char		s_size[4];	/* section size			*/
	char		s_scnptr[4];	/* file ptr to raw data for section */
	char		s_relptr[4];	/* file ptr to relocation	*/
	char		s_lnnoptr[4];	/* file ptr to line numbers	*/
	char		s_nreloc[2];	/* number of relocation entries	*/
	char		s_nlnno[2];	/* number of line number entries*/
	char		s_flags[4];	/* flags			*/
};

Generating assembler files and replacing the .gcc_except_table by
..gcc_exc
does not work because there is at least one library (libgcc.a) which
contains
the .gcc_except_table section too.

It seems to be a general compiler problem when generating COFF code. The
compiler should not use section names which are longer than 8 characters
in this case.

Just a guess,
Gunther
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