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Debugging Data Format
A debugging data format is a means of storing information about a compiled computer program for use by high-level debuggers. Modern debugging data formats store enough information to allow source-level debugging. High-level debuggers need information about variables, types, constants, subroutines and so on, so they can translate between machine-level storage and source language constructs. Such information can also be used by other software tools. The information must be generated by the compiler and stored in the executable file or dynamic library by the linker. Some object file formats include debugging information, but others can use generic debugging data formats such as stabs and DWARF. List of debugging formats * stabs * COFF * Portable Executable (PE/COFF) * Relocatable Object Module Format (OMF) * IEEE-695 * DWARF See also * Debug symbol A debug symbol is a special kind of symbol that attaches additional information to the symbol table of an object file, such ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Computer Program
A computer program is a sequence or set of instructions in a programming language for a computer to execute. Computer programs are one component of software, which also includes documentation and other intangible components. A computer program in its human-readable form is called source code. Source code needs another computer program to execute because computers can only execute their native machine instructions. Therefore, source code may be translated to machine instructions using the language's compiler. ( Assembly language programs are translated using an assembler.) The resulting file is called an executable. Alternatively, source code may execute within the language's interpreter. If the executable is requested for execution, then the operating system loads it into memory and starts a process. The central processing unit will soon switch to this process so it can fetch, decode, and then execute each machine instruction. If the source code is requested for execution, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Debugger
A debugger or debugging tool is a computer program used to software testing, test and debugging, debug other programs (the "target" program). The main use of a debugger is to run the target program under controlled conditions that permit the programmer to track its execution and monitor changes in computer resources that may indicate malfunctioning code. Typical debugging facilities include the ability to run or halt the target program at specific points, display the contents of memory, CPU registers or storage devices (such as disk drives), and modify memory or register contents in order to enter selected test data that might be a cause of faulty program execution. The code to be examined might alternatively be running on an ''instruction set simulator'' (ISS), a technique that allows great power in its ability to halt when specific conditions are encountered, but which will typically be somewhat slower than executing the code directly on the appropriate (or the same) processor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Compiler
In computing, a compiler is a computer program that translates computer code written in one programming language (the ''source'' language) into another language (the ''target'' language). The name "compiler" is primarily used for programs that translate source code from a high-level programming language to a low-level programming language (e.g. assembly language, object code, or machine code) to create an executable program. Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools by Alfred V. Aho, Ravi Sethi, Jeffrey D. Ullman - Second Edition, 2007 There are many different types of compilers which produce output in different useful forms. A ''cross-compiler'' produces code for a different CPU or operating system than the one on which the cross-compiler itself runs. A ''bootstrap compiler'' is often a temporary compiler, used for compiling a more permanent or better optimised compiler for a language. Related software include, a program that translates from a low-level language to a h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Executable
In computing, executable code, an executable file, or an executable program, sometimes simply referred to as an executable or binary, causes a computer "to perform indicated tasks according to encoded instruction (computer science), instructions", as opposed to a data (computing), data file that must be interpreted (parser, parsed) by a program to be meaningful. The exact interpretation depends upon the use. "Instructions" is traditionally taken to mean machine code instructions for a physical central processing unit, CPU. In some contexts, a file containing scripting instructions (such as bytecode) may also be considered executable. Generation of executable files Executable files can be hand-coded in machine language, although it is far more convenient to develop software as source code in a high-level language that can be easily understood by humans. In some cases, source code might be specified in assembly language instead, which remains human-readable while being close ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dynamic Library
In computing, a dynamic linker is the part of an operating system that loads and links the shared libraries needed by an executable when it is executed (at "run time"), by copying the content of libraries from persistent storage to RAM, filling jump tables and relocating pointers. The specific operating system and executable format determine how the dynamic linker functions and how it is implemented. Linking is often referred to as a process that is performed when the executable is compiled, while a dynamic linker is a special part of an operating system that loads external shared libraries into a running process and then binds those shared libraries dynamically to the running process. This approach is also called dynamic linking or late linking. Implementations Microsoft Windows Dynamic-link library, or DLL, is Microsoft's implementation of the shared library concept in the Microsoft Windows and OS/2 operating systems. These libraries usually have the file extension DL ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Object File
An object file is a computer file containing object code, that is, machine code output of an assembler or compiler. The object code is usually relocatable, and not usually directly executable. There are various formats for object files, and the same machine code can be packaged in different object file formats. An object file may also work like a shared library. In addition to the object code itself, object files may contain metadata used for linking or debugging, including: information to resolve symbolic cross-references between different modules, relocation information, stack unwinding information, comments, program symbols, debugging or profiling information. Other metadata may include the date and time of compilation, the compiler name and version, and other identifying information. The term "object program" dates from at least the 1950s: A computer programmer generates object code with a compiler or assembler. For example, under Linux, the GNU Compiler Collection com ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stabs
stabs (sometimes written STABS) is a debugging data format for storing information about computer programs for use by symbolic and source-level debuggers. (The information is stored in symbol table strings; hence the name "stabs".) Cygnus Support attributes the invention of stabs to for the Berkeley Pascal pdx debugger, however, he claims otherwise, stating stabs came with adb and sdb but could predate those. , who created pdx for his 1981 master's thesis and later developed it into dbx, states his doctoral adviser Michael L. Powell "contributed to the stabstrings design, especially to support Modula-2". History When stabs was created in the 1980s, the dominant object file format was a.out, which (unlike more recent formats such as ELF) makes no provision for storing debugging information. Stabs works around this problem by encoding the information using special entries in the symbol table. At one stage stabs was widely used on Unix systems, but the newer DWARF format has l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
DWARF
Dwarf or dwarves may refer to: Common uses *Dwarf (folklore), a being from Germanic mythology and folklore * Dwarf, a person or animal with dwarfism Arts, entertainment, and media Fictional entities * Dwarf (''Dungeons & Dragons''), a humanoid race *Dwarf (Middle-earth), a humanoid race in J. R. R. Tolkien's literature * Dwarf (''Warhammer''), a humanoid race * Dwarfs (''Discworld''), a race of characters * Dwarves (''Artemis Fowl''), a race of characters * Dwarves (''Warcraft''), a short, strong race *Dwarves (Marvel Comics) Literature * ''The Dwarf'' (Cho novel), a 1978 novel by Cho Se-hui * ''The Dwarf'' (Lagerkvist novel), a 1944 novel by Pär Lagerkvist Other arts, entertainment, and media * ''Dwarfs?!'' (video game) *Dwarves (band), American punk band *Killer Dwarfs, Canadian heavy metal band *Wrocław's dwarfs, small sculptures in Wrocław, Poland Biology *Phyletic dwarfism, an average decrease in size of animals **Insular dwarfism, a evolutionary condition caused by g ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
COFF
The Common Object File Format (COFF) is a format for executable, object code, and shared library computer files used on Unix systems. It was introduced in Unix System V, replaced the previously used a.out format, and formed the basis for extended specifications such as XCOFF and ECOFF, before being largely replaced by ELF, introduced with SVR4. COFF and its variants continue to be used on some Unix-like systems, on Microsoft Windows (Portable Executable), in UEFI environments and in some embedded development systems. History The original Unix object file format a.out is unable to adequately support shared libraries, foreign format identification , or explicit address linkage . As development of Unix-like systems continued both inside and outside AT&T, different solutions to these and other issues emerged. COFF was introduced in 1983, in AT&T's UNIX System V for non-VAX 32-bit platforms such as the 3B20. Improvements over the existing AT&T ''a.out'' format included arb ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Portable Executable
The Portable Executable (PE) format is a file format for executables, object code, DLLs and others used in 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows operating systems. The PE format is a data structure that encapsulates the information necessary for the Windows OS loader to manage the wrapped executable code. This includes dynamic library references for linking, API export and import tables, resource management data and thread-local storage (TLS) data. On NT operating systems, the PE format is used for EXE, DLL, SYS (device driver), MUI and other file types. The Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) specification states that PE is the standard executable format in EFI environments. On Windows NT operating systems, PE currently supports the x86-32, x86-64 (AMD64/Intel 64), IA-64, ARM and ARM64 instruction set architectures (ISAs). Prior to Windows 2000, Windows NT (and thus PE) supported the MIPS, Alpha, and PowerPC ISAs. Because PE is used on Windows CE, it continues t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Relocatable Object Module Format
The Relocatable Object Module Format (OMF) is an object file format used primarily for software intended to run on Intel 80x86 microprocessors. Version 4.0 was released by Intel in 1981 under the name ''Object Module Format'', and is perhaps best known to DOS users as an ''.OBJ file''. It has since been standardized by the Tool Interface Standards Committee. File format Many object file formats consist of a set of tables, such as the relocation table, which are either stored on fixed positions in the file, like the a.out format, or are pointed to by the header, like the ELF format. The "sections", code, data area, etc., are stored as contiguous areas of bytes within such files. The Relocatable Object Module Format, however, was designed to require minimal memory when linking, and consists of a series of records that have the following format: There is a wide variety of record types because of consolidation of OMF variants from several vendors, and because of adding such fea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
