Re: gdb can't handle a DIE with both sibling and children

[Michael Elizabeth Chastain <mec@shout.net>]

David Carlton asks:

> So: what does it mean for a subroutine to have another entry point?  I
> see that that entry point has a name; is that name visible to other
> compilation units, or only to the compilation unit in question?

The former.  The entry point is globally visible, just like the
main function name.

I never actually wrote an ENTRY statement, but here's a classic
FORTRAN example, where the body of "sine" and "cosine" would be
the same:

       double function sine (angle)
       double angle
       goto 10
       entry cosine (angle)
       angle = (3.14159265358979/4) - angle
       goto 10
    10 ... calculate the sine here ...
       return
       end

Of course, one could have implemented this as:

       double entry cosine (angle)
       return sine (3.14159265358979/4 - angle)
       end

But that's a waste of CPU time, back when the CPU was running
at 0.1 MHz.

For a modern example, it would be possible to implement those
pesky in-charge/not-in-charge constructors with one body of code
with 2 or 3 entry points.

> If it's only visible to the compilation unit in question, then the
> partial symtab probably doesn't have to know about it at all.  If it's
> visible outside the compilation unit (and if the compiler really is
> correct in putting DW_TAG_entry_points as children of
> DW_TAG_subroutines), then the partial symtab probably does have to know
> about it.

The main name and the entry names have the same visibility.
To the caller, 'sine' and 'cosine' are peers.

Michael C