Category: Programming

I recently added support for STT_GNU_IFUNC to gold. As you can tell by the name, STT_GNU_IFUNC is a GNU specific ELF symbol type. It is defined in the range reserved for operating system specific types. A symbol with type STT_GNU_IFUNC is a function, but the symbol does not provide the address of the function as…

It’s a frequent observation that computing has oscillated between centralized and distributed. We’ve gone from centralized computing facilities (which were effectively single-user, but only the administrators could use them) to time-sharing to personal computers to server farms. Data has moved from the card deck you kept in your office to the tape deck at the…

I’ve always found it easy to deal with machines, as I expect is true of most computer programmers. The interface to a machine is not always logical, but it is normally consistent in the sense that it always behaves the same way given the same inputs, and it is normally unambiguous in the sense that…

Back in March Go picked up a dynamic exception mechanism. Previously, when code called the panic function, it simply aborted your program. Now, it walks up the stack to the top of the currently running goroutine, running all deferred functions. More interestingly, if a deferred function calls the new recover function, the panic is interrupted,…

I’m very pleased to see that the GCC steering committee has agreed to permit GCC to be written in C++. At one time RMS, who is a member of the steering committee, had felt that C++ was never appropriate for systems programs like GCC. It’s good to see that he has apparently come around. There…