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Section

Locate Section and Locate NTSection will map data from the application .EXE or a .DLL file. The data in PE files (Win32's portable executable file format) is divided into named sections. The Name parameter in a Locate Section or NTSection command maps to a name in the PE file. The special name PEHeader may be used to denote the PE file header.

Example:

Locate  Section  .text  LowMem

This command will map section .text from the EXE file to region LowMem. RTLoc will determine the type of access required and the size of section .text.

What sections are required by a program depends on the compiler/linker used. RTLoc will write a complete list of all the PE file's sections to the .LOC file in the EXE File Report. Section Compiling and Linking with On Time RTOS-32 contains an overview of the sections generated by each compiler/linker.

The complete syntax for the Name parameter in Locate Section and Locate NTSection commands is:

[ModuleName.]SectionName

or

[ModuleName.]#SectionNumber

The name of the section to be mapped may be prefixed with the name of the module containing the respective section. If omitted, the application's main .EXE file is assumed.

Example:

Locate  Section  Mydll.dll..idata  LowMem

This command will map section .idata of module Mydll.dll. Mydll.dll must have been referenced in a previous DLL command.

By default, RTLoc will ignore and Locate Section or Locate NTSection commands for section names which do not exist. To change this behavior use RTLoc option -n.

Some linkers may produce several sections with the same name or the name may contain unprintable characters. In this case, the section's number can be specified instead of its name. The PE file header has section number 0. Section numbering for all other sections starts at 1 (see the EXE File Report in the .LOC file for a complete list of all sections).

Example:

Locate  Section  .text             LowMem 
Locate  Section  Somedll.dll.DATA  HighMem 
Locate  Section  Mylib.dll.#3      MyROM

The module's and the section's names are not case sensitive.

The Size parameter has a special meaning for Sections and NTSections: it is used as the segment index into the map file. If specified, RTLoc will try to determine the size of the section by interpreting the module's MAP file.

Example:

Locate  Section  CODE  LowMem  1

The map file produced by the linker might contain the following information:

Start         Length     Name      Class 
0001:00000000 000005969H _TEXT     CODE 
0002:00000000 000001300H _DATA     DATA 
0002:00001300 000000000H _TLSCBA   TLSCBA 
0002:00001300 000000024H _INIT_    INITDATA 
0002:00001324 000000000H _INITEND_ INITDATA 
0002:00001324 000000006H _EXIT_    EXITDATA 
0002:0000132A 000000000H _EXITEND_ EXITDATA 
0002:0000132C 000000000H CONST     CONST 
0002:0000132C 000000624H _BSS      BSS 
0002:00001950 000000000H _BSSEND   BSS

RTLoc will find that segment 1 has a size of 5969h and will use this value instead of that from the PE file. This has the advantage of reducing the program's memory requirements, since some Win32 linkers will round up a section's size to a multiple of 512.

If the specified region (or physical region in a virtual region specification) has memory type Device, the RTTarget-32 program loader will not zero-initialize the section. This feature is useful to support non-volatile RAM. For more information, please section Using Non-Volatile Memory in chapter Advanced Topics.

Locate Command

NTSection