Broken Code in gas/symbols.c

[Ravi <ravi at codito dot com>]

Hi,

I was going over some of the binutils 2.15 code when I came across the 
following code :

<snip: gas/symbols.c>

void
symbol_mark_used_in_reloc (symbolS *s)
{
   if (LOCAL_SYMBOL_CHECK (s))
       s = local_symbol_convert ((struct local_symbol *) s);
   s->sy_used_in_reloc = 1;
}

</snip: gas/symbols.c>

Now local_symbol_convert creates a 'struct symbol' from a 'struct 
local_symbol' by doing a malloc. Since the function takes the pointer to 
a 'struct symbol', the newly created 'struct local symbol' does not get 
returned to the calling function.

The two options to make the newly created 'struct local symbol' 
available to the caller is either returning the value of the 'struct 
local symbol' or passing the 'struct symbol' by reference. The former 
would tend to break the consistency between all the functions defined in 
symbols.c as some of the functions already return values of their own. 
This leaves us with the second option of passing the 'struct symbol' by 
reference for all the functions in gas/symbols.c. For example the 
function symbol_mark_used_in_reloc would be changed to:

</snip: gas/symbols.h>

extern void symbol_mark_used_in_reloc (symbolS **);

</snip: gas/symbols.h>



<snip: gas/symbols.c>

void
symbol_mark_used_in_reloc (symbolS **s)
{
   symbolS *t = *s;

   if (LOCAL_SYMBOL_CHECK (t))
       t = local_symbol_convert ((struct local_symbol *) t);
   t->sy_used_in_reloc = 1;
   *s = t;
}

</snip: gas/symbols.c>

When I built the 2.15 sources for an arc-elf32 target I got the 
following problem:

<snip>

ravi@firebolt:/overflow/crap/tests$ cat test.s

.section .rodata.str, "aMS", @progbits, 1
.LC3: .string "main"
.section .text
mov r0, .LC3+1



ravi@firebolt:/overflow/crap/tests$ 
/overflow/crap/install/bin/arc-elf32-as test.s
Segmentation fault
ravi@firebolt:/overflow/crap/tests$

</snip>

My solution seems to solve this problem. Is this the best way of going 
about it though ?



Regards,
Ravi Ramaseshan.