SPO600: Lab2

Brief description: 

Wrote a simple c program to display “Hello World!”, and  compiled it using command “gcc –g –O0 – fno-builtin”. Then using command “objdump” with options –f, -d, -s, --source to display the information of the output file.

And then do the following changes to see the changes and difference in the results.

5) Move the printf() call to a separate function named output(), and call that function from main().




Original output file: a.out

Output file after change: hello_all5.out

Before change:

When run the command: 

It only has main section for the source code:

After change

When run the command: 

It shows following:

6) Remove -O0 and add -O3 to the gcc options. Note and explain the difference in the compiled code.

-O3 is to optimize more for code size and execution time. It reduces the execution time, but increase the memory usage and compile time.

Output file before change: hello_all5.out

Output file after change: hello_all6.out

I use “time” command to check the execution time of above files, and get following result.

hello_all6.out is complied with the option –O3. It supposes to have less execution time. However, it takes much longer in real time than the previous one. Well, it does take less time in sys time.

I also compared the sizes of the output files with –O0 and –O3. The hello_all5.out, which is compiled with –O0, has smaller size than hell0_all6.out, being compiled with –O3. Apparently, compiling file with option –O3 does not reduce the file size. Instead, it increases the file size.

Following sreenshots are the result by running “objdump –source” command for both of the files.

Comparing the two results, I found:

1       --- The sequences of <main> section and <output> section in both results are different. For the output file hello_all5.out, being compiled with –O0 option, <main> section appears after <frame-dummy> section. And <output> section is after <main> section. By contrast, for the output file hello_all6.out, being compiled with –O3 option, <main> section appears right after the line “ Disassembly of section .text”. And <output> section still appears after <frame-dummy> section.

2   ---The contents of <main> section and <output> section are different for both results. For the output file hello_all6.out, the contents of both <main> section and <output> section are shorter than those in the result of hello_all5.out. It has 6 actions in <main> section of hello_all5.out and 9 actions in <output> section of hello_all5.out. By contrast, there are only 3 actions in <main> section of hello_all6.out and 4 actions in <output> section of hello_all6.out.

When I ran “objdump –s” for both files, I found more differences.

Contents of section .debug_line and contents of section .debug_str are shorter than the result of hello_all6.out. Moreover, the result generate by hello_all6.out has one more section – contents of section .debug_ranges.

Contents of section. debug_str generated by hello_all5.out

It is good to know that using different compiling options, the compiler compiles the program in different ways. Each option serves the different purposes. Accordingly, the assembler contents of each object files are different as well.

Using “objdump” command, it is good to see the assembler contents of the object file. It’s a good start to learn the assembly language. However, I still don’t fully understand what the assembler contents stand for. With learning more assembly language, I think it won’t be a problem for me anymore.