From: Blake Jones <blakejones@google.com>
To: Alexei Starovoitov <ast@kernel.org>,
Daniel Borkmann <daniel@iogearbox.net>,
Andrii Nakryiko <andrii@kernel.org>
Cc: Martin KaFai Lau <martin.lau@linux.dev>,
Eduard Zingerman <eddyz87@gmail.com>, Song Liu <song@kernel.org>,
Yonghong Song <yonghong.song@linux.dev>,
John Fastabend <john.fastabend@gmail.com>,
KP Singh <kpsingh@kernel.org>,
Stanislav Fomichev <sdf@fomichev.me>, Hao Luo <haoluo@google.com>,
Jiri Olsa <jolsa@kernel.org>, Mykola Lysenko <mykolal@fb.com>,
Shuah Khan <shuah@kernel.org>,
Ihor Solodrai <ihor.solodrai@linux.dev>,
Namhyung Kim <namhyung@kernel.org>,
Ian Rogers <irogers@google.com>,
bpf@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
linux-kselftest@vger.kernel.org,
Blake Jones <blakejones@google.com>
Subject: [PATCH v3 1/2] libbpf: add support for printing BTF character arrays as strings
Date: Tue, 3 Jun 2025 13:37:00 -0700 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <20250603203701.520541-1-blakejones@google.com> (raw)
The BTF dumper code currently displays arrays of characters as just that -
arrays, with each character formatted individually. Sometimes this is what
makes sense, but it's nice to be able to treat that array as a string.
This change adds a special case to the btf_dump functionality to allow
0-terminated arrays of single-byte integer values to be printed as
character strings. Characters for which isprint() returns false are
printed as hex-escaped values. This is enabled when the new ".emit_strings"
is set to 1 in the btf_dump_type_data_opts structure.
As an example, here's what it looks like to dump the string "hello" using
a few different field values for btf_dump_type_data_opts (.compact = 1):
- .emit_strings = 0, .skip_names = 0: (char[6])['h','e','l','l','o',]
- .emit_strings = 0, .skip_names = 1: ['h','e','l','l','o',]
- .emit_strings = 1, .skip_names = 0: (char[6])"hello"
- .emit_strings = 1, .skip_names = 1: "hello"
Here's the string "h\xff", dumped with .compact = 1 and .skip_names = 1:
- .emit_strings = 0: ['h',-1,]
- .emit_strings = 1: "h\xff"
Signed-off-by: Blake Jones <blakejones@google.com>
---
tools/lib/bpf/btf.h | 3 ++-
tools/lib/bpf/btf_dump.c | 55 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++-
2 files changed, 56 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
diff --git a/tools/lib/bpf/btf.h b/tools/lib/bpf/btf.h
index 4392451d634b..ccfd905f03df 100644
--- a/tools/lib/bpf/btf.h
+++ b/tools/lib/bpf/btf.h
@@ -326,9 +326,10 @@ struct btf_dump_type_data_opts {
bool compact; /* no newlines/indentation */
bool skip_names; /* skip member/type names */
bool emit_zeroes; /* show 0-valued fields */
+ bool emit_strings; /* print char arrays as strings */
size_t :0;
};
-#define btf_dump_type_data_opts__last_field emit_zeroes
+#define btf_dump_type_data_opts__last_field emit_strings
LIBBPF_API int
btf_dump__dump_type_data(struct btf_dump *d, __u32 id,
diff --git a/tools/lib/bpf/btf_dump.c b/tools/lib/bpf/btf_dump.c
index 460c3e57fadb..7c2f1f13f958 100644
--- a/tools/lib/bpf/btf_dump.c
+++ b/tools/lib/bpf/btf_dump.c
@@ -68,6 +68,7 @@ struct btf_dump_data {
bool compact;
bool skip_names;
bool emit_zeroes;
+ bool emit_strings;
__u8 indent_lvl; /* base indent level */
char indent_str[BTF_DATA_INDENT_STR_LEN];
/* below are used during iteration */
@@ -2028,6 +2029,52 @@ static int btf_dump_var_data(struct btf_dump *d,
return btf_dump_dump_type_data(d, NULL, t, type_id, data, 0, 0);
}
+static int btf_dump_string_data(struct btf_dump *d,
+ const struct btf_type *t,
+ __u32 id,
+ const void *data)
+{
+ const struct btf_array *array = btf_array(t);
+ const char *chars = data;
+ __u32 i;
+
+ /* Make sure it is a NUL-terminated string. */
+ for (i = 0; i < array->nelems; i++) {
+ if ((void *)(chars + i) >= d->typed_dump->data_end)
+ return -E2BIG;
+ if (chars[i] == '\0')
+ break;
+ }
+ if (i == array->nelems) {
+ /* The caller will print this as a regular array. */
+ return -EINVAL;
+ }
+
+ btf_dump_data_pfx(d);
+ btf_dump_printf(d, "\"");
+
+ for (i = 0; i < array->nelems; i++) {
+ char c = chars[i];
+
+ if (c == '\0') {
+ /*
+ * When printing character arrays as strings, NUL bytes
+ * are always treated as string terminators; they are
+ * never printed.
+ */
+ break;
+ }
+ if (isprint(c))
+ btf_dump_printf(d, "%c", c);
+ else
+ btf_dump_printf(d, "\\x%02x", (__u8)c);
+ }
+
+ btf_dump_printf(d, "\"");
+
+ return 0;
+}
+
static int btf_dump_array_data(struct btf_dump *d,
const struct btf_type *t,
__u32 id,
@@ -2055,8 +2102,13 @@ static int btf_dump_array_data(struct btf_dump *d,
* char arrays, so if size is 1 and element is
* printable as a char, we'll do that.
*/
- if (elem_size == 1)
+ if (elem_size == 1) {
+ if (d->typed_dump->emit_strings &&
+ btf_dump_string_data(d, t, id, data) == 0) {
+ return 0;
+ }
d->typed_dump->is_array_char = true;
+ }
}
/* note that we increment depth before calling btf_dump_print() below;
@@ -2544,6 +2596,7 @@ int btf_dump__dump_type_data(struct btf_dump *d, __u32 id,
d->typed_dump->compact = OPTS_GET(opts, compact, false);
d->typed_dump->skip_names = OPTS_GET(opts, skip_names, false);
d->typed_dump->emit_zeroes = OPTS_GET(opts, emit_zeroes, false);
+ d->typed_dump->emit_strings = OPTS_GET(opts, emit_strings, false);
ret = btf_dump_dump_type_data(d, NULL, t, id, data, 0, 0);
--
2.49.0.1204.g71687c7c1d-goog
next reply other threads:[~2025-06-03 20:37 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 13+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2025-06-03 20:37 Blake Jones [this message]
2025-06-03 20:37 ` [PATCH v3 2/2] Tests for the ".emit_strings" functionality in the BTF dumper Blake Jones
2025-06-05 20:45 ` Andrii Nakryiko
2025-06-05 21:00 ` [PATCH v3 1/2] libbpf: add support for printing BTF character arrays as strings patchwork-bot+netdevbpf
2025-08-30 5:19 ` Ian Rogers
2025-09-01 4:17 ` Yonghong Song
2025-09-01 5:22 ` Ian Rogers
2025-09-01 7:57 ` Namhyung Kim
2025-09-01 17:04 ` Ian Rogers
2025-09-02 16:47 ` Ian Rogers
2025-09-02 18:20 ` Ian Rogers
2025-06-11 10:34 ` Jiri Olsa
2025-06-11 17:20 ` Blake Jones
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