From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from ultra7.eskimo.com (ultra7.eskimo.com [204.122.16.70]) by ozlabs.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id BFFB367B56 for ; Mon, 24 Jul 2006 14:12:36 +1000 (EST) Received: from eskimo.com (johnnyb@eskimo.com [204.122.16.13]) by ultra7.eskimo.com (8.13.6/8.13.4) with ESMTP id k6O41WUO027593 for ; Sun, 23 Jul 2006 21:01:32 -0700 Date: Sun, 23 Jul 2006 21:01:38 -0700 (PDT) From: Jonathan Bartlett To: linuxppc-dev@ozlabs.org Subject: Why the "opd" section? Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII List-Id: Linux on PowerPC Developers Mail List List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , I'm learning PPC64 assembly language, and I found the existence of the "opd" sections containing function descriptors quite odd. What is the use of these? Are they used by the linker? Why are they needed in the 64-bit ELF platforms and not the 32-bit ones? Thanks, Jon