Re: Does a zero-sized object in BSS go away?

[Geoff Keating <geoffk at geoffk dot org>]

> Date: Thu, 19 Jun 2003 14:19:39 -0400 (EDT)
> Cc: binutils@sources.redhat.com
> From: Kazu Hirata <kazu@cs.umass.edu>

> Hi Geoff,
> 
> > The linker should assign an address to it.  However, some object file
> > formats can't represent zero-sized common objects, in which case the
> > assembler should probably report an error if someone tries to create one.
> 
> Thanks.  That means some valid C using a zerosized object program
> may not be represented in those formats.  Sigh...

ISO C programs can't create zero-size objects, but you can do it in
GCC.

I think there's no way to tell if an object, which the program thinks
is zero-size, actually has non-zero size.  So you could just make the
common symbols have size 1 if the user asks for size 0...

-- 
- Geoffrey Keating <geoffk@geoffk.org>