[Bug c/37506] attribute section is not working with constant strings

["nm127 at freemail dot hu" <gcc-bugzilla at gcc dot gnu dot org>]

------- Comment #4 from nm127 at freemail dot hu  2008-09-14 05:32 -------
(In reply to comment #3)
> char* y __attribute__ ((__section__(".xxx_section"))) = "Hello World!";
> 
> That only puts the pointer variable y into that section and not the string. 

Exatly that is my problem. So the pointer variable y goes to section
.xxx_section, but the actual string not. And I do not know any possibility to
specify that the "Hello World!" string should also go to .xxx_section.

For example I expect that in case of the following two lines the "Hello World!"
string itself should be stored in section .xxx_section:

char* z = __attribute__ ((__section__(".xxx_section"))) "Hello World!";
char* w = "Hello World!" __attribute__ ((__section__(".xxx_section")));

What I get for both lines is an error message:

$ gcc -Wall test.c  
test.c:5: error: expected expression before '__attribute__'
test.c:6: error: expected ',' or ';' before '__attribute__'

Also, the problem gets complicated when a complete structure is initialized and
it has some string fields:

typedef struct {
        int x;
        int y;
        char* str;
} s;

s a __attribute__ ((__section__(".xxx_section"))) = {
        0x11223344,
        0x55667788,
        "string of the initialized struct"
};

int main() {
        return 0;
}

Now we get the following sections:

$ objdump -s a.out

a.out:     file format elf32-i386

[...]
Contents of section .rodata:
 8048448 03000000 01000200 73747269 6e67206f  ........string o
 8048458 66207468 6520696e 69746961 6c697a65  f the initialize
 8048468 64207374 72756374 00                 d struct.       
[...]
Contents of section .xxx_section:
 804957c 44332211 88776655 50840408           D3"..wfUP...    

My expectation is that if I specify that the structure should be stored in
.xxx_section than the string itself should also be stored in .xxx_section.


-- 


http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=37506