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<h4 class="subsection">2.7.1 Reading symbols</h4>
<p>There are two stages to reading a symbol table from a BFD:
allocating storage, and the actual reading process. This is an
excerpt from an application which reads the symbol table:
<pre class="example"> long storage_needed;
asymbol **symbol_table;
long number_of_symbols;
long i;
storage_needed = bfd_get_symtab_upper_bound (abfd);
if (storage_needed < 0)
FAIL
if (storage_needed == 0)
return;
symbol_table = xmalloc (storage_needed);
...
number_of_symbols =
bfd_canonicalize_symtab (abfd, symbol_table);
if (number_of_symbols < 0)
FAIL
for (i = 0; i < number_of_symbols; i++)
process_symbol (symbol_table[i]);
</pre>
<p>All storage for the symbols themselves is in an objalloc
connected to the BFD; it is freed when the BFD is closed.
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