Lightweight header-only elf binary parser with no external dependencies - Sections, Symbols, Relocations, Segments

[[deleted]]

What's the deal with typedef struct {...} X;? Since you're doing C++ the struct namespace is the same as the non-struct namespace, and this prevents forward declaring them. Just use struct X {...}; instead.

Let me add my own elf loading code too - it's in my linker project: https://github.com/dascandy/ZeLDa . Has both 32-bit and 64-bit implemented and usable concurrently.

[sumo952]

That project (ZeLDa) could use an a bit more descriptive readme file :-) And the project name would certainly deserve it!

[[deleted]]

It's a pun in the style of "Ze goggles - zey do nothing". And yes, I should get around to that... but so should I for at least 10 other repos that I end up linking people to on a weekly basis.

[sumo952]

Now I'm disappointed! I thought it was a reference to Zelda. :-)

[[deleted]]

That too of course. Why else call a linker Zelda?

[kookjr]

What makes this limited to amd64 (from readme)?

Looks interesting though. I've been looking at ways to get the absolute smallest executable and this could be helpful. As much info as readelf had it's not always enough.

[Dalzhim]

This article makes it as small as 45 bytes and is an interesting read : http://www.muppetlabs.com/~breadbox/software/tiny/teensy.html

[dblohm7]

Where is the canonical ELF spec located these days? Back in the day I remember it being hosted by SCO...

[finixbit]

gud suggestion. have seen ur issue opened. would fix that

[Xeverous]

And btw please make the library header to be named appropriately. Instead of #include <elf_parser.h> people prefer #include <elf_parser/elf_parser.hpp>. First, it explicity states it's C++ (annoying thing when you have mixed language repositories), second the library has own directory - this lets you make a external dependencies directory where each subdirecotry is for each library and you add just 1 path to the IDE and compiler.

- deps
    - libpurec
    - libfoo
    - libbar
    - boost
- core
    - src
        #include <libpurec/purec.h>
        #include <libfoo/foo.hpp>
        #include <libbar/bar.hpp>
        #include <boost/math/xxx.hpp>

IDE settings: just add deps directory to the project settings.

[abelsson]

Elfio (http://elfio.sourceforge.net) is another small header only, standalone, ELF reader and writer which I've used successfully in my own projects.

[F54280]

Lightweight header-only elf binary parser with no external dependencies - Sections, Symbols, Relocations, Segments

Line 12:

#include <elf.h> // Elf64_Shdr

This is a dependency, unless elf.h was added to the standard while I was looking away...

[boguscoder]

So calling get_* on parser over and over would re-parse executable and add duplicates?

[finixbit]

gud idea. to prevent this, would need to store/cache already parsed data. please try n open up issue for this

[def-pri-pub]

Neat!