By default, ELF sections are aligned on a four-byte boundary. expression can have any integer value from 0 to 31. The section is aligned on a 2^expression-byte boundary. For example, if expression is 10, the section is aligned on a 1KB boundary.

This is not the same as the way that the ALIGN directive is specified. See ALIGN.

section specifies an associated ELF section. sectionname must be included in any link that includes section

Contains machine instructions. READONLY is the default.

Causes the assembler to insert NOP instructions when the ALIGN directive is used after ARM or Thumb instructions within the section, unless the ALIGN directive specifies a different padding.

Is a common section definition. This ELF section can contain code or data. It must be identical to any other section of the same name in other source files.

Identical ELF sections with the same name are overlaid in the same section of memory by the linker. If any are different, the linker generates a warning and does not overlay the sections. See Chapter 3 Using the Basic Linker Functionality in the Linker User Guide.

Is a common group section. All sections within a common group are common. When the object is linked, other object files may have a GROUP with signature symbol_name. Only one group is kept in the final image.

Is a common data section. You must not define any code or data in it. It is initialized to zeros by the linker. All common sections with the same name are overlaid in the same section of memory by the linker. They do not all have to be the same size. The linker allocates as much space as is required by the largest common section of each name.

Contains data, not instructions. READWRITE is the default.

Sets the ELF type of the current area to SHT_FINI_ARRAY.

Is the signature for the group and must be defined by the source file, or a file included by the source-file. All AREAS with the same symbol_name signature are placed in the same group. Sections within a group are kept or discovered together.

Sets the ELF type of the current area to SHT_INIT_ARRAY.

Specifies a relative location for the current section in the image. It ensures that the order of all the sections with the LINKORDER attribute, with respect to each other, is the same as the order of the corresponding named sections in the image.

Indicates that the linker can merge the current section with other sections with the MERGE=n attribute. n is the size of the elements in the section, for example n is 1 for characters. You must not assume that the section will be merged because the attribute does not force the linker to merge the sections.

Indicates that no memory on the target system is allocated to this area.

Indicates that the data section is uninitialized, or initialized to zero. It contains only space reservation directives SPACE or DCB, DCD, DCDU, DCQ, DCQU, DCW, or DCWU with initialized values of zero. You can decide at link time whether an area is uninitialized or zero initialized. See Chapter 3 Using the Basic Linker Functionality in the Linker User Guide.

Sets the ELF type of the current area to SHT_PREINIT_ARRAY.

Indicates that this section should not be written to. This is the default for Code areas.

Indicates that this section can be read from and written to. This is the default for Data areas.

Adds one or more ELF flags, denoted by n, to the current section.

Sets the ELF type of the current section to n.

Adds the SHF_STRINGS flag to the current section. To use the STRINGS attribute, you must also use the MERGE=1 attribute. The contents of the section must be strings that are nul-terminated using the DCB directive.