[Dwarf-Discuss] decoding of form entries

[Michael Eager]

Mathieu Lacage wrote:
> hi,
> 
> Sorry for all these questions but I am getting lost, so, I am looking
> for a bit of help...
> 
> Something that has been bugging me for a while is that I am not sure I
> understand the meaning of 2.19  p 40 (dw4) that talks about how to
> retrieve the value associated to an attribute in an entry. It says:
> 
> "For a reference, the value is a reference to another entity whose
> value is the value of the
> attribute."
> 
> So, I have a very practical question: if I want to get the value of
> this form, I read the reference, that gives me a new location to parse
> in the dwarf sections. What is the content of that new location ? Does
> it point to an entry (meaning, I am going to find there an abbrev
> code) ? If so, how do I know which attribute in this entry is going to
> contain the value of my original attribute ? Would it be expected to
> be the same attribute with a different non-reference form ?

In the most common cases, the "entity" will be another DIE in the
same compilation unit, which you will need to parse to find the
value of attribute you are looking for.

The definition of a reference is more general to allow a reference
to be to any DWARF entity.

-- 
Michael Eager	 eager at eagercon.com
1960 Park Blvd., Palo Alto, CA 94306  650-325-8077