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6.16.2. Contents of Binutils‌

Installed programs: addr2line, ar, as, c++filt, dwp, elfedit, gprof, ld, ld.bfd, ld.gold, nm, objcopy, objdump, ranlib, readelf, size, strings, and strip

Installed libraries: libbfd.{a,so} and libopcodes.{a,so}

Installed directory: /usr/lib/ldscripts

Short Descriptions

addr2line Translates program addresses to file names and line numbers; given an address and the name of an executable, it uses the debugging information in the executable to determine which source file and line number are associated with the address

ar Creates, modifies, and extracts from archives

as An assembler that assembles the output of gcc into object files

c++filt Used by the linker to de-mangle C++ and Java symbols and to keep overloaded functions from clashing

dwp The DWARF packaging utility

elfedit Updates the ELF header of ELF files

gprof Displays call graph profile data

ld A linker that combines a number of object and archive files into a single file, relocating their data and tying up symbol references

ld.gold A cut down version of ld that only supports the elf object file format

ld.bfd Hard link to ld

nm Lists the symbols occurring in a given object file

objcopy Translates one type of object file into another

objdump Displays information about the given object file, with options controlling the particular information to display; the information shown is useful to programmers who are working on the compilation tools

ranlib Generates an index of the contents of an archive and stores it in the archive; the index lists all of the symbols defined by archive members that are relocatable object files

readelf Displays information about ELF type binaries

size Lists the section sizes and the total size for the given object files

strings Outputs, for each given file, the sequences of printable characters that are of at least the specified length (defaulting to four); for object files, it prints, by default, only the strings from the initializing and loading sections while for other types of files, it scans the entire file

strip Discards symbols from object files

libbfd The Binary File Descriptor library

libopcodes A library for dealing with opcodes—the “readable text” versions of instructions for the processor; it is used for building utilities like objdump

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