Question about Offsets

["Iyer, Balaji V" <balaji.v.iyer@intel.com>]

Hello Everyone,
	This question is regarding adding offsets into a user-defined section into gcc.

Let’s say I have a section called “my_section” and I want the section to have some sub-sections (e.g. a string table). One of the fields in my section is the offset to the next header. How do I represent this in GCC? I think I have to do it in RTL expressions (RTX).

Here is an example of what I am trying to do (please note that what I have below is a semi-pseudo code). 

.section “.my_section”

START_LABEL:   
# The next 5 lines are headers
	.ascii “My Section Magic Header”
	.int STRING_TABLE_LABEL – START_LABEL      ⇐====== HOW TO DO THIS? I WOULD LIKE THE LINKER TO THEN CONVERT IT TO A NUMBER.
	.int  10 <SIZE OF STRING TABLE>
	…                      # Here I have other data which could be of variable length

STRING_TABLE_LABEL:
	.string “HELLO”
	.string “WORLD”

.end “my_section”
.section “.text”
……




Thanks,

Balaji V. Iyer.