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<h3 class="section">5.8 Structures</h3>

<p>The encoding of structures in stabs can be shown with an example.

   <p>The following source code declares a structure tag and defines an
instance of the structure in global scope. Then a <code>typedef</code> equates the
structure tag with a new type.  Separate stabs are generated for the
structure tag, the structure <code>typedef</code>, and the structure instance.  The
stabs for the tag and the <code>typedef</code> are emitted when the definitions are
encountered.  Since the structure elements are not initialized, the
stab and code for the structure variable itself is located at the end
of the program in the bss section.

<pre class="example">     struct s_tag {
       int   s_int;
       float s_float;
       char  s_char_vec[8];
       struct s_tag* s_next;
     } g_an_s;
     
     typedef struct s_tag s_typedef;
</pre>
   <p>The structure tag has an <code>N_LSYM</code> stab type because, like the
enumeration, the symbol has file scope.  Like the enumeration, the
symbol descriptor is &lsquo;<samp><span class="samp">T</span></samp>&rsquo;, for enumeration, structure, or tag type. 
The type descriptor &lsquo;<samp><span class="samp">s</span></samp>&rsquo; following the &lsquo;<samp><span class="samp">16=</span></samp>&rsquo; of the type
definition narrows the symbol type to structure.

   <p>Following the &lsquo;<samp><span class="samp">s</span></samp>&rsquo; type descriptor is the number of bytes the
structure occupies, followed by a description of each structure element. 
The structure element descriptions are of the form
&lsquo;<samp><var>name</var><span class="samp">:</span><var>type</var><span class="samp">, </span><var>bit offset from the start of the
struct</var><span class="samp">, </span><var>number of bits in the element</var></samp>&rsquo;.

<!-- FIXME: phony line break.  Can probably be fixed by using an example -->
<!-- with fewer fields. -->
<pre class="example">     # <span class="roman">128 is N_LSYM</span>
     .stabs "s_tag:T16=s20s_int:1,0,32;s_float:12,32,32;
             s_char_vec:17=ar1;0;7;2,64,64;s_next:18=*16,128,32;;",128,0,0,0
</pre>
   <p>In this example, the first two structure elements are previously defined
types.  For these, the type following the &lsquo;<samp><var>name</var><span class="samp">:</span></samp>&rsquo; part of the
element description is a simple type reference.  The other two structure
elements are new types.  In this case there is a type definition
embedded after the &lsquo;<samp><var>name</var><span class="samp">:</span></samp>&rsquo;.  The type definition for the
array element looks just like a type definition for a stand-alone array. 
The <code>s_next</code> field is a pointer to the same kind of structure that
the field is an element of.  So the definition of structure type 16
contains a type definition for an element which is a pointer to type 16.

   <p>If a field is a static member (this is a C<tt>++</tt> feature in which a single
variable appears to be a field of every structure of a given type) it
still starts out with the field name, a colon, and the type, but then
instead of a comma, bit position, comma, and bit size, there is a colon
followed by the name of the variable which each such field refers to.

   <p>If the structure has methods (a C<tt>++</tt> feature), they follow the non-method
fields; see <a href="Cplusplus.html#Cplusplus">Cplusplus</a>.

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