What is "init_dummy"?

[Jeffrey A Law]

  In message < 34B04545.B0FD46B5@ucsd.edu >you write:
  > Hi, I've been profiling (gprof) some code generated by egcs 971225, and
  > I keep getting random references to "init_dummy".  Is this intensional? 
  > Is there some documentation on what "init_dummy" is, so that I can guess
  > what the profiling output means?
It's part of the global ctor/dtor support code as well as code to handle
registration of exception handling information.

jeff