Question

From this question, I’ve seen a funny code which compile (although with warnings) and produce a segmentation fault (gcc 4.4.4; clang 2.8):

main;

If we expand it, here is the result:

int main = 0;

So what is the linker’s behavior here?

Answer 1

The linker’s behavior is that it defines a symbol called main in either the program’s data or BSS segment. It is 4 bytes long and initialized to 0. Ordinarily, it creates a symbol in the program’s code segment (typically called .text) with the executable code for the main function.

The C runtime starts up at a fixed entry point (typically called _start), initializes a bunch of stuff (e.g. sets up the program’s arguments), and calls the main function. When main is executable code, this is all fine and dandy, but if it’s instead 4 zero bytes, the program will transfer control to those zero bytes and try to execute them.

Typically, the data and BSS segments are marked as non-executable, so when you try to execute code there, the processor will raise an exception, which the OS will interpret and then terminate your program with a signal. If somehow the segment it’s in is executable, then it will try to execute the machine instructions defined by 00 00 00 00. In x86 and x86-64, that’s an illegal instruction, so you’d also get a SIGILL signal in POSIX OSes.