[Bug ld/18344] New: ld emits unnecessary line breaks that pollute the output of compilers.

[saulery at free dot fr]

https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=18344

            Bug ID: 18344
           Summary: ld emits unnecessary line breaks that pollute the
                    output of compilers.
           Product: binutils
           Version: 2.25
            Status: NEW
          Severity: minor
          Priority: P2
         Component: ld
          Assignee: unassigned at sourceware dot org
          Reporter: saulery at free dot fr
  Target Milestone: ---

Hello Dear Maintainer,

I use the FreePascal Compiler (FPC) which is called ld to link its libraries as
follows:


$fpc msg2inc
Free Pascal Compiler version 2.6.4+dfsg-4 [2014/10/14] for x86_64
Copyright (c) 1993-2014 by Florian Klaempfl and others
Target OS: Linux for x86-64
Compiling msg2inc.pp
msg2inc.pp(64,3) Note: Local variable "code" is assigned but never used
Linking msg2inc





/usr/bin/ld.bfd warning: link.res contains output sections; did you forget -T? 
823 lines compiled, 0.3 sec
1 note(s) issued 


According to the program compiled the number of unnecessary newlines is greater
or less.

FPC calls ld as follows:

/usr/bin/ld.bfd -b elf64-x86-64 -melf_x86_64 -s -L. -o msg2inc link.res


After a long search, I was able to determine that the lexer (ld/ldlex.c) called
an ECHO command that does nothing, except printing a useless character (see
extracts below file, line 3214):

1891 /* Copy whatever the last rule matched to the standard output. */
1892 #ifndef ECHO
1893 /* This used to be an fputs(), but since the string might contain NUL's,
1894  * we now use fwrite().
1895  */
1896 #define ECHO do { if (fwrite( yytext, yyleng, 1, yyout )) {} } while (0)
1897 #endif
[...]
3206 case 197:
3207 YY_RULE_SETUP
3208 #line 473 "ldlex.l"
3209 lex_warn_invalid (" in expression", yytext);
3210    YY_BREAK
3211 case 198:
3212 YY_RULE_SETUP
3213 #line 475 "ldlex.l"
3214 ECHO;
3215    YY_BREAK


The culprit line is generated from the ldlex.l file (line 475):

472 <SCRIPT,MRI,VERS_START,VERS_SCRIPT,VERS_NODE>.  lex_warn_invalid (" in
script", yytext);
473 <EXPRESSION,DEFSYMEXP,BOTH>.  lex_warn_invalid (" in expression", yytext);
474 
475 %%
476 ^L
477 
478 /* Switch flex to reading script file NAME, open on FILE,
479    saving the current input info on the include stack.  */

>From there, I do not know if flex is involved, or if it is misused.


Regards,

-- 
Stéphane Aulery

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