RANLIB(5) BSD File Formats Manual RANLIB(5)NAMEranlib — a.out archive (library) table-of-contents format
SYNOPSIS
#include <ranlib.h>
DESCRIPTION
The archive table-of-contents command ranlib creates a table of contents
for archives, containing object files, to be used by the link-editor
ld(1). It operates on archives created with the utility ar(1).
The ranlib function prepends a new file to the archive which has three
separate parts. The first part is a standard archive header, which has a
special name field, "__.SYMDEF".
The second part is a “long” followed by a list of ranlib structures. The
long is the size, in bytes, of the list of ranlib structures. Each of
the ranlib structures consists of a zero based offset into the next sec‐
tion (a string table of symbols) and an offset from the beginning of the
archive to the start of the archive file which defines the symbol. The
actual number of ranlib structures is this number divided by the size of
an individual ranlib structure.
The third part is a “long” followed by a string table. The long is the
size, in bytes of the string table.
SEE ALSOar(1), ranlib(1)BUGS
The <ranlib.h> header file, and the ranlib manual page, do not describe
the table-of-contents used by ELF systems, which is that from the AT&T
System V Release 4 UNIX ABI.
BSD June 6, 1993 BSD