objdump: interpretation of stabs debuginformation

[Ian Lance Taylor]

Roul Oldenburger <oldenburger.roul@rheinmetall-de.com> writes:

> I do 'objdump --stabs my_executable' and try to parse the output.
> The aim is to reconstruct type descriptions of structures which might
> be nested in an arbitrary depth ... down to the basictypes of the
> final components.

You may want to look at objdump --debugging.

> In fact the type is duration, but my problem is to distinguish between
> the different possibilities ... so looking for the type number only is
> not enough.

In an executable, the stabs for different .o files are simply appended
(with some elimination of information duplicated in .h files).  A
particular type number is only valid within a given file.  Each file's
entries start with one or more consecutive N_SO strings.

> Where can I find the stabs format specification which is used for objdump?

In the file
    gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo
or online at
    http://sources.redhat.com/gdb/download/onlinedocs/stabs.html

Ian