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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-13T00:39:08+00:00

From here what are . and * means in a c macro? 583 #define

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From here what are . and * means in a c macro? 

583 #define INITCALLS                                                       \
584         *(.initcallearly.init)                                          \
585         VMLINUX_SYMBOL(__early_initcall_end) = .;                       \
586         *(.initcall0.init)                                              \
587         *(.initcall0s.init)                                             \
588         *(.initcall1.init)                                              \
589         *(.initcall1s.init)                                             \
590         *(.initcall2.init)                                              \
591         *(.initcall2s.init)                                             \
592         *(.initcall3.init)                                              \
593         *(.initcall3s.init)                                             \
594         *(.initcall4.init)                                              \
595         *(.initcall4s.init)                                             \
596         *(.initcall5.init)                                              \
597         *(.initcall5s.init)                                             \
598         *(.initcallrootfs.init)                                         \
599         *(.initcall6.init)                                              \
600         *(.initcall6s.init)                                             \
601         *(.initcall7.init)                                              \
602         *(.initcall7s.init)
603
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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Its a linker script. The section merging and placement is done by the linker. A programmer can control how the sections are merged and at what locations they are placed in memory through a linker script file. The file you referred to was doing just that.

    The .(dot) refers to the link section and the wild card character * is used instead of individually specifying multiple file names containing the same named link section.

    Refer: http://sources.redhat.com/binutils/docs-2.10/ld_3.html

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