Question about ADDR(SECTION) of ld in document

[Cao jin]

Hi Nick

  Sorry for late and thanks very much for your demonstration.
On 11/7/18 12:40 AM, Nick Clifton wrote:
> Hi Cao,
> 
>> 'ADDR(SECTION)'
>>      Return the address (VMA) of the named SECTION.  Your script must
>>      previously have defined the location of that section.  In the
>>      following example, 'start_of_output_1', 'symbol_1' and 'symbol_2'
>>      are assigned equivalent values, except that 'symbol_1' will be
>>      relative to the '.output1' section while the other two will be
>>      absolute:
>>           SECTIONS { ...
>>             .output1 :
>>               {
>>               start_of_output_1 = ABSOLUTE(.);
>>               ...
>>               }
>>             .output :
>>               {
>>               symbol_1 = ADDR(.output1);
>>               symbol_2 = start_of_output_1;
>>               }
>>           ... }
>>
>> My intuition tell me the symbol_1's value is relative to the ".output"
>> section, not ".output1", which is also the offset inside ".output", and
>> symbol_2's value is the same as symbol_1.
> 
> It is non-intuitive, I agree.  But the documentation is correct.  If you
> look at the symbol table qfter linking something with the above linker
> script you will see that symbol_1 is actually set to be relative to the
> .output1 section, not the .output section.  This is despite the fact that
> it is defined in the .output section.
> 
> For example:
> 
>   % readelf --syms --wide --sections a.out
>   Section Headers:
>   [Nr] Name              Type            Address          Off    Size   ES Flg Lk Inf Al
>   [ 1] .output2          PROGBITS        0000000000000000 200000 000004 00  WA  0   0  1
>   [ 2] .output1          PROGBITS        0000000000000004 200004 000004 00  WA  0   0  1
>   [ 3] .output           PROGBITS        0000000000000008 200008 00000c 00  WA  0   0  1
> 
>   Symbol table '.symtab' contains 9 entries:
>      Num:    Value          Size Type    Bind   Vis      Ndx Name
>      4: 0000000000000004     0 NOTYPE  GLOBAL DEFAULT  ABS start_of_output_1
>      5: 0000000000000004     0 NOTYPE  GLOBAL DEFAULT    2 symbol_1
>      6: 000000000000000c     0 NOTYPE  GLOBAL DEFAULT    3 symbol_2
> 
> Note that the "Ndx" field of symbol_1 is 2 (ie the .output1 section)
> whereas the Ndx field of symbol_2 is 3 (ie the .output section).
> 
> (I am using a slightly tweaked version of the linker script from the documentation
> which is why some of the actual values may not be what you expect).
> 

I did the test as you did, it does shows the same as yours. It looks
like the confusing point is what does the "relative" mean exactly, after
looking at st_shndx of `man elf`, I can understand it a little bit more,
but still not clear how it would be used:(

Sincerely,
Cao jin