nld Manual

nld Diagnostic Messages
nld Manual—528272-001
4-10
Terms That Appear in nld Diagnostic Messages
standard archives/standard SRLs. Archives or SRLs that are provided by HP and
expected to be in a standard place, the location of which depends on the environment.
nld does not have a built-in list of archives or SRLs that you might need. They all must
be specified with -l or -lib on page 3-7 on the nld command line (or in an OBEY
command file). When they are so specified, nld looks for them in standard places,
after first looking in places specified on the command line with -L or -libvol on page 3-8.
static data. These terms are used in different ways. They might refer to data that is visible
only within a single compilation. Alternatively, they might refer to all data that exists
outside of procedures and therefore remains in existence throughout the lifetime of a
program, regardless of whether it is visible across separate compilations.
suffix. The last part of a filename in environments other than the Guardian environment. By
convention, the suffix for an archive is .a and for an SRL is .srl; nld is not sensitive
to any other suffixes.
symbol. Either a procedure or a data item.
symbol information/symbol table. Object files contain symbol information (in a symbol
table) that describes the contents of the program and that is needed by the debugger.
Some of the symbol information is global, in the sense that it relates to items that are
visible across separate compilations, and is of fundamental importance to nld when
linking files together. The other symbol information is local and needed only by the
debugger, not by nld.
If nld indicates a bad or unexpected value in the symbol table, it is probably the type
of problem that is not your fault but is an error in the compiler or linker, or an
inconsistency between them, and needs to be referred to your service provider for
further analysis.
SYSGEN. The activity that is used to build a new version of the NonStop operating system.
During SYSGEN, there are various calls on nld.
system library. A loadfile that is built during SYSGEN as a result of various activities,
including nld steps. The system library contains the code for the functions provided by
the operating system at run time.
TANDEM_GINFO. One of the sections of a loadfile.
TANDEM_INFO. The name for one of the sections of an object file. TANDEM_INFO must
always be present.
text. The terms code and text are used interchangeably to describe the contents of
procedures as opposed to data. The compiler places text into the text section of the
object file. nld, when building a loadfile, can split the text apart into an (ordinary) text
section and a resident text section.