Re: what's the purpose of SYMBOL_NAME()

Brian Gerst (bgerst@didntduck.org)
Thu, 14 Jun 2001 13:34:42 -0400


Marty Leisner wrote:
>
> I'm read Bovet's "Understand the Linux Kernel"
> and looked at the assembly routine setup_idt...
>
> I noticed the assembly has SYMBOL_NAME
> (its all over the place).
>
> This is define in include/linux/linkage.h
>
> to just:
> #define SYMBOL_NAME(X) X
>
> (this wasn't in Bovet's book).
>
> What's the purpose?

IIRC, it's a holdover from the days when the kernel could be compiled in
a.out and ELF format. a.out prepends an underscore to all symbols,
whereas ELF does not.

--

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