Re: [Bug binutils/4292] nm and objdump show addresses on 64 bits for 32bit a.out files

[Nick Clifton]

Hi Quentin,

> It works, thanks (I suppose the work could also be done on objdump, to have a
> coherent behaviour), but it breaks the purpouse H.J. Lu mentioned.

Well I am not so sure about H.J.'s point.  If I understand it correctly 
he wants addresses displayed as 64-bit values when running the tools on 
64-bit hosts, even when the target file uses a 32-bit address space, in 
order to be able to check for internal bugs.  To me it seems wrong to 
display a 32-bit address as a 64-bit value, since it implies that the 
address (and the space it is in) is in a 64-bit domain.  I think that it 
would be better not to confuse the users of the tools, even if this 
makes it harder to track down internal bugs.  (After all if we do 
suspect an internal bug we can always add printfs of our own to help 
track it down).

Objdump already does the correct thing when displaying symbols from ELF 
files, so it only has problems with other file formats.  I have created 
a revised patch which takes care of the other cases.  Please give it a try.

> It's indeed not clear about what should be done, for multi-arch utils. Maybe a
> switch ? (but it would become much more than a small patch, and I don't want to
> have an argument with developpers)

No this should not be necessary.  In my opinion addresses should always 
be displayed as values of the size if the target's address space.

Cheers
  Nick