nlist using bfd

[Ian Lance Taylor]

   Date: Thu, 6 Apr 2000 18:55:54 +0200 (CEST)
   From: "Philippe De Muyter" <phdm@macqel.be>

   I noticed that the startup of my gdb is slow, and found out that it uses
   nlist() to find the value of the `u' kernel symbol.  The native `nlist'
   is slow, because it does a `read' system call for each `COFF' entry.

   I think we should rather use `bfd' for that purpose, but I do not want
   to reinvent the wheel, so here is my question : 

	   Can somebody point me to an already written a `nlist' replacement
	   using bfd, or sketch one off-hand ?

BFD doesn't provide an nlist replacement.  BFD provides a generic
interface to object files.  A specific nlist interface is generally
specific to a particular object file format.

The closest equivalent BFD has is bfd_get_symtab_upper_bound followed
by bfd_canonicalize_symtab.  You can then look through the list of
asymbol structures for the one named 'u'.

Ian