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<h3 class="section">7.71 <code>.previous</code></h3>

<p><a name="index-g_t_0040code_007bprevious_007d-directive-437"></a><a name="index-Section-Stack-438"></a>This is one of the ELF section stack manipulation directives.  The others are
<code>.section</code> (see <a href="Section.html#Section">Section</a>), <code>.subsection</code> (see <a href="SubSection.html#SubSection">SubSection</a>),
<code>.pushsection</code> (see <a href="PushSection.html#PushSection">PushSection</a>), and <code>.popsection</code>
(see <a href="PopSection.html#PopSection">PopSection</a>).

   <p>This directive swaps the current section (and subsection) with most recently
referenced section/subsection pair prior to this one.  Multiple
<code>.previous</code> directives in a row will flip between two sections (and their
subsections).  For example:

<pre class="smallexample">     .section A
      .subsection 1
       .word 0x1234
      .subsection 2
       .word 0x5678
     .previous
      .word 0x9abc
</pre>
   <p>Will place 0x1234 and 0x9abc into subsection 1 and 0x5678 into subsection 2 of
section A.  Whilst:

<pre class="smallexample">     .section A
     .subsection 1
       # Now in section A subsection 1
       .word 0x1234
     .section B
     .subsection 0
       # Now in section B subsection 0
       .word 0x5678
     .subsection 1
       # Now in section B subsection 1
       .word 0x9abc
     .previous
       # Now in section B subsection 0
       .word 0xdef0
</pre>
   <p>Will place 0x1234 into section A, 0x5678 and 0xdef0 into subsection 0 of
section B and 0x9abc into subsection 1 of section B.

   <p>In terms of the section stack, this directive swaps the current section with
the top section on the section stack.

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