Last checked against version &binutils-contversion;. addr2line, ar, as, gasp, gprof, ld, nm, objcopy, objdump, ranlib, readelf, size, strings and strip addr2line translates program addresses into file names and line numbers. Given an address and an executable, it uses the debugging information in the executable to figure out which file name and line number are associated with a given address. The ar program creates, modifies, and extracts from archives. An archive is a single file holding a collection of other files in a structure that makes it possible to retrieve the original individual files (called members of the archive). as is primarily intended to assemble the output of the GNU C compiler, gcc, for use by the linker ld. gasp is the Assembler Macro Preprocessor. gprof displays call graph profile data. ld combines a number of object and archive files, relocates their data and ties up symbol references. Often the last step in building a new compiled program to run is a call to ld. nm lists the symbols from object files. objcopy utility copies the contents of an object file to another. objcopy uses the GNU BFD Library to read and write the object files. It can write the destination object file in a format different from that of the source object file. objdump displays information about one or more object files. The options control what particular information to display. This information is mostly useful to programmers who are working on the compilation tools, as opposed to programmers who just want their program to compile and work. ranlib generates an index to the contents of an archive, and stores it in the archive. The index lists each symbol defined by an archive member that is a relocatable object file. readelf displays information about elf type binaries. size lists the section sizes --and the total size-- for each of the object files in its argument list. By default, one line of output is generated for each object file or each module in an archive. For each file given, strings prints the printable character sequences that are at least 4 characters long (or the number specified with an option to the program) and are followed by an unprintable character. By default, it only prints the strings from the initialized and loaded sections of object files. For other types of files, it prints the strings from the whole file. strings is mainly useful for determining the contents of non-text files. strip discards all or specific symbols from object files. The list of object files may include archives. At least one object file must be given. strip modifies the files named in its argument, rather than writing modified copies under different names. libbfd.[a,so] and libopcodes.[a,so] libbfd is the Binary File Descriptor library. libopcodes is a native library for dealing with opcodes and is used in the course of building utilities such as objdump. Opcodes are actually "readable text" versions of instructions for the processor.