Nick Mudge Ignition Software Consulting & Development

Rob Olson wrote an interesting post: What if I went to a Java school Joel?

This is interesting: We need innovation at the lowest level of software in order to continue innovating at the top.

I've been using some binary tools to inspect and learn about ELF binary files. If you are unfamiliar with the Executable and Linkable Format (ELF), here's the standard which is the main reference I've been learning from.

Here's some tools that I've found useful:

• dumpelf - This is probably my favorite. It's part of the Gentoo PaX Utilities. Description from the Gentoo PaX Utilities guide: "With the dumpelf utility you can convert a ELF file into human readable C code that defines a structure with the same image as the original ELF file."
• readelf - Good for displaying header information.
• nm - Good for displaying symbol information.
• objdump - Displays headers, symbols, relocation information, disassembly etc.

If you know of other good information on ELF or tools regarding it let me know.

I wrote a second parser that parses arithmetic expressions. It implements a pushdown automaton using the C function call stack as the stack. In other words it uses recursive functions. It's 45 percent less code than my last parser and is much more elegant.

I hooked it up to the web interface.

The C code:
parser.h
scanner.c
parser.c