behavior of "strip -N" [[ added an example ]]

[Adam Megacz]

Adam Megacz <adam@megacz.com> writes:
> I've noticed that when I strip a global symbol using strip -N and then
> link with --noinhibit-exec, the locations where that symbol's address
> would have been written get a 0x0 instead.

Here's a concrete example of what I'm talking about:

megacz@curry$ /usr/local/gcc/bin/i686-pc-mingw32-strip -g libgcj.a
megacz@curry$ /usr/local/gcc/bin/i686-pc-mingw32-objdump -r libgcj.a | grep -A4 \\[.text\$_GLOBAL__I__ZN4java2io19SyncFailedExceptionC1Ev
RELOCATION RECORDS FOR [.text$_GLOBAL__I__ZN4java2io19SyncFailedExceptionC1Ev]:
OFFSET   TYPE              VALUE 
00000009 dir32             .data$_ZN4java2io19SyncFailedException6class$E
0000000e DISP32            __Jv_RegisterClass

megacz@curry$ /usr/local/gcc/bin/i686-pc-mingw32-strip -gN .data\$_ZN4java2io19SyncFailedException6class\$E libgcj.a
megacz@curry$ /usr/local/gcc/bin/i686-pc-mingw32-objdump -r libgcj.a | grep -A4 \\[.text\$_GLOBAL__I__ZN4java2io19SyncFailedExceptionC1Ev
RELOCATION RECORDS FOR [.text$_GLOBAL__I__ZN4java2io19SyncFailedExceptionC1Ev]:
OFFSET   TYPE              VALUE 
00000009 dir32             __ZN4java2io19SyncFailedExceptionC1Ev
0000000e DISP32            __Jv_RegisterClass

Note that the relocation record's symbol changed when I stripped out
the section containing the target of the symbol (see the line starting
with "00000009" in each instance of grep)!

Shouldn't the relocation record retain the same value, which would be
an undefined symbol?

Can anybody explain this behavior?

  - a