| <html lang="en"> |
| <head> |
| <title>Sub-Sections - Using as</title> |
| <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html"> |
| <meta name="description" content="Using as"> |
| <meta name="generator" content="makeinfo 4.13"> |
| <link title="Top" rel="start" href="index.html#Top"> |
| <link rel="up" href="Sections.html#Sections" title="Sections"> |
| <link rel="prev" href="As-Sections.html#As-Sections" title="As Sections"> |
| <link rel="next" href="bss.html#bss" title="bss"> |
| <link href="http://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/" rel="generator-home" title="Texinfo Homepage"> |
| <!-- |
| This file documents the GNU Assembler "as". |
| |
| Copyright (C) 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, |
| 2000, 2001, 2002, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 Free Software Foundation, Inc. |
| |
| Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document |
| under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 |
| or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; |
| with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no |
| Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the |
| section entitled ``GNU Free Documentation License''. |
| |
| --> |
| <meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css"> |
| <style type="text/css"><!-- |
| pre.display { font-family:inherit } |
| pre.format { font-family:inherit } |
| pre.smalldisplay { font-family:inherit; font-size:smaller } |
| pre.smallformat { font-family:inherit; font-size:smaller } |
| pre.smallexample { font-size:smaller } |
| pre.smalllisp { font-size:smaller } |
| span.sc { font-variant:small-caps } |
| span.roman { font-family:serif; font-weight:normal; } |
| span.sansserif { font-family:sans-serif; font-weight:normal; } |
| --></style> |
| <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="../cs.css"> |
| </head> |
| <body> |
| <div class="node"> |
| <a name="Sub-Sections"></a> |
| <a name="Sub_002dSections"></a> |
| <p> |
| Next: <a rel="next" accesskey="n" href="bss.html#bss">bss</a>, |
| Previous: <a rel="previous" accesskey="p" href="As-Sections.html#As-Sections">As Sections</a>, |
| Up: <a rel="up" accesskey="u" href="Sections.html#Sections">Sections</a> |
| <hr> |
| </div> |
| |
| <h3 class="section">4.4 Sub-Sections</h3> |
| |
| <p><a name="index-numbered-subsections-204"></a><a name="index-grouping-data-205"></a>Assembled bytes |
| conventionally |
| fall into two sections: text and data. |
| You may have separate groups of |
| data in named sections |
| that you want to end up near to each other in the object file, even though they |
| are not contiguous in the assembler source. <samp><span class="command">as</span></samp> allows you to |
| use <dfn>subsections</dfn> for this purpose. Within each section, there can be |
| numbered subsections with values from 0 to 8192. Objects assembled into the |
| same subsection go into the object file together with other objects in the same |
| subsection. For example, a compiler might want to store constants in the text |
| section, but might not want to have them interspersed with the program being |
| assembled. In this case, the compiler could issue a ‘<samp><span class="samp">.text 0</span></samp>’ before each |
| section of code being output, and a ‘<samp><span class="samp">.text 1</span></samp>’ before each group of |
| constants being output. |
| |
| <p>Subsections are optional. If you do not use subsections, everything |
| goes in subsection number zero. |
| |
| <p>Each subsection is zero-padded up to a multiple of four bytes. |
| (Subsections may be padded a different amount on different flavors |
| of <samp><span class="command">as</span></samp>.) |
| |
| <p>Subsections appear in your object file in numeric order, lowest numbered |
| to highest. (All this to be compatible with other people's assemblers.) |
| The object file contains no representation of subsections; <code>ld</code> and |
| other programs that manipulate object files see no trace of them. |
| They just see all your text subsections as a text section, and all your |
| data subsections as a data section. |
| |
| <p>To specify which subsection you want subsequent statements assembled |
| into, use a numeric argument to specify it, in a ‘<samp><span class="samp">.text |
| </span><var>expression</var></samp>’ or a ‘<samp><span class="samp">.data </span><var>expression</var></samp>’ statement. |
| When generating COFF output, you |
| can also use an extra subsection |
| argument with arbitrary named sections: ‘<samp><span class="samp">.section </span><var>name</var><span class="samp">, |
| </span><var>expression</var></samp>’. |
| When generating ELF output, you |
| can also use the <code>.subsection</code> directive (see <a href="SubSection.html#SubSection">SubSection</a>) |
| to specify a subsection: ‘<samp><span class="samp">.subsection </span><var>expression</var></samp>’. |
| <var>Expression</var> should be an absolute expression |
| (see <a href="Expressions.html#Expressions">Expressions</a>). If you just say ‘<samp><span class="samp">.text</span></samp>’ then ‘<samp><span class="samp">.text 0</span></samp>’ |
| is assumed. Likewise ‘<samp><span class="samp">.data</span></samp>’ means ‘<samp><span class="samp">.data 0</span></samp>’. Assembly |
| begins in <code>text 0</code>. For instance: |
| <pre class="smallexample"> .text 0 # The default subsection is text 0 anyway. |
| .ascii "This lives in the first text subsection. *" |
| .text 1 |
| .ascii "But this lives in the second text subsection." |
| .data 0 |
| .ascii "This lives in the data section," |
| .ascii "in the first data subsection." |
| .text 0 |
| .ascii "This lives in the first text section," |
| .ascii "immediately following the asterisk (*)." |
| </pre> |
| <p>Each section has a <dfn>location counter</dfn> incremented by one for every byte |
| assembled into that section. Because subsections are merely a convenience |
| restricted to <samp><span class="command">as</span></samp> there is no concept of a subsection location |
| counter. There is no way to directly manipulate a location counter—but the |
| <code>.align</code> directive changes it, and any label definition captures its |
| current value. The location counter of the section where statements are being |
| assembled is said to be the <dfn>active</dfn> location counter. |
| |
| </body></html> |
| |