Programming Assignment #1 (Lab 1): Linker Professor Hubertus Franke Class CSCI-GA.2250-001: Operating Systems – Fall 2023
In this lab you will be implementing a two-pass linker. In general, a linker takes individually compiled code/object modules and creates a single executable by resolving external symbol references (e.g. variables and functions) and module relative addressing by assigning global addresses after placing the modules’ object code at global addresses.
Rather than dealing with complex x86 tool chains that I demonstrated in class, we assume a target machine with the following properties: (a) word addressable, (b) addressable memory of 512 words, and (c) each valid word is represented by an integer (<10000). [ I know that is a really strange machine, but I once saw an UFO in New Mexico Area 51 too]. But core tasks of linkers such relocation, relative addressing, symbol table maintenance is handled in this context.
The input to the linker is a file containing a sequence of tokens (symbols and integers and instruction mode characters). Don’t assume tokens that make up a section to be on one line, don’t make assumptions about how much space separates tokens or that lines are non-empty for that matter or that each input conforms syntactically. Symbols always begin with alpha characters followed by optional alphanumerical characters, i.e.[a-Z][a-Z0-9]*. Valid symbols can be up to 16 characters. Integers are decimal based. Instruction type characters are (M, A, R, I, E). Token delimiters are ‘ ‘, ‘\t’ or ‘\n’.
The input file to the linker is structured as a series of “object module” definitions.
Each “object module” definition contains three parts (in fixed order): definition list, use list, and program text.
• definition list consists of a count defcount followed by defcount pairs (S, R) where S is the symbol being defined and R is the relative word address (offset) to which the symbol refers in the module (0-based counting).
• use list consists of a count usecount followed by usecount symbols that can be referred to in this module. These could include symbols defined in the definition list of any module (prior or subsequent or not at all).
• program text consists of a count codecount followed by codecount pairs (addrmode, instr), where addrmode is a single character indicating the addressing mode as Module, Absolute, Relative, Immediate or External. instr is the instruction (integer). Note that codecount defines the length/size of the module.
The instruction integer is comprised of an opcode (instruction/1000) and an operand (instruction%1000). The opcode always remains unchanged by the linker. For the instruction value read an integer and ensure opcode < 10, see errorcodes below. The operand is modified/retained based on the instruction type in the program text as follows:
(M) operand is number of a valid module and is replaced with the base address of that module.
(A) operand is an absolute address which will never be changed in pass2; however it can’t be “>=” the machine size (512); (R) operand is a relative address in the module which is relocated by replacing the relative address with the absolute address of that relative address after the module’s global address has been determined (absolute_addr = module_base+relative_addr). (I) an immediate operand is unchanged, but must be less than 900.
(E) operand is an external address which is represented as an index into the uselist. For example, a reference in the program text with operand K represents the Kth symbol in the use list, using 0-based counting, e.g., if the use list is ‘‘2 f g’’, then an instruction ‘‘E 7000’’ refers to f, and an instruction ‘‘E 5001’’ refers to g. You must identify to which global address the symbol is assigned and then replace the operand with that global address.
The linker must process the input twice (that is why it is called two-pass) (to preempt the favored question: “Can I do it in one pass?”→NO, because storing tokens makes your program more complex). Pass One parses the input and verifies the correct syntax and determines (1) the base address for each module, stores it in a module_base table, and (2) the absolute address for each defined symbol, storing the latter in a symbol table. The first module has base address zero; the base address for module X+1 is equal to the base address of module X plus the length of module X (defined as the number of instructions in a module). The absolute address for symbol S defined in module M is the base address of M plus the relative address of S within M. After pass one print the symbol table (including errors related to it (see rule2 later)). Do not store parsed tokens, the only data you should and need to store between passes are the module_base table the symbol table.
Pass Two again parses the input and uses the base addresses and the symbol table entries created in pass one to generate the actual output by relocating relative addresses and resolving external references. You should reuse pass-1 parser code just with different actions. You must clearly mark your two passes in the code through comments and/or proper function naming.
While parsing you can not store tokens, not between pass one and pass two, nor while parsing a single line. This practices reentrant code which one encounters frequently in Operating Systems. This implies you can only parse and consume one token at a time and can’t run through a full line and store tokens per line or file as indicated in the strtok man page. To enforce this we deduct 3 pts if you do this.
– Page 1 of 8 –
Programming Assignment #1 (Lab 1): Linker Professor Hubertus Franke Class CSCI-GA.2250-001: Operating Systems – Fall 2023
Other requirements: error detection, limits, and space used.
To receive full credit, you must check the input for various errors (test inputs will have lots of errors). All errors/warnings should follow the message catalog provided below. We will do a textual difference against a reference implementation to grade your program. Any reported difference will indicate a non-compliance with the instructions provided and is reported as an error and results in deductions.
You should continue processing after encountering an error/warning (other than a syntax error) and you should be able to detect multiple errors in the same run.
1. You should stop processing if a syntax error is detected in the input, print a syntax error message with the line number and the character offset in the input file where observed. A syntax error is defined as a missing token (e.g. 4 used symbols are defined but only 3 are given) or an unexpected token. Stop processing and exit.
2. If a symbol is defined multiple times, print an error message and use the value given in the first definition. The error message is to appear as part of printing the symbol table (following symbol=value printout on the same line).
3. If a symbol is used in an E-instruction but not defined anywhere, print an error message and use the value absolute zero.
4. If a symbol is defined but not used, print a warning message and continue.
5. If an address appearing in a first definition of a symbol exceeds the size of the module, print a warning message in
pass1 after processing the module and treat the address given as 0 (relative to the module). If the symbol is a
redefinition then print a warning message (see message below).
6. If an external operand is too large to reference an entry in the use list, print an error message and treat the operand as
relative=0.
7. If a symbol appears in a use list but is not actually used in the module (i.e., not referred to in an E-type address),
print a warning message and continue. If the same unused symbol appears multiple time in uselist, multiple
warnings are to be printed.
8. If an absolute address exceeds the size of the machine, print an error message and use the absolute value zero.
9. If a relative address exceeds the size of the module, print an error message and use the module relative value zero
(that means you still need to remap “0” that to the correct absolute address).
10. If an illegal immediate operand (I) is encountered (i.e. >= 900), print an error and convert the operand value to 999.
11. If an illegal opcode is encountered (i.e. op >= 10), print an error and convert the
12. If a module operand is invalid, print an error message and assume module 0.
The following exact limits are in place.
a) Accepted symbols should be upto 16 characters long (not including terminations e.g. ‘\0’), any longer symbol names
are erroneous.
b) a uselist or deflist should support 16 definitions, but not more and an error should be raised.
c) number of instructions are unlimited (hence the two pass system), but in reality they are limited to the machine size.
d) Symbol table should support at least 256 symbols (reference program supports exactly 256 symbols).
e) Module table should support at least 128 entries (reference program supports exactly 128 entries).
There are several sample inputs and outputs provided as part of the sample input files / output files (see NYU Classes).
The first (input-1) is shown below and the second (input-2) is a re-formatted version of the first. They both produce the same output as the input is token-based and hence present the same content to the linker. Many of the input sets contain errors that you are to detect as described above. Note that when you have questions regarding errors, please first make sure the structure of the input is not messing with your mind. We will run your lab on these (and other) input sets.
5R1004 I5678 0
6R8001 E1000 0
2 R 5001 E 4000 1z2
3A8000 E1001
E2000 R8002 E7001
E1000 E3000 R1002 A1010
– Page 2 of 8 –
Programming Help
Programming Assignment #1 (Lab 1): Linker Professor Hubertus Franke Class CSCI-GA.2250-001: Operating Systems – Fall 2023
Your output is expected to strictly follow this format (with exception of empty lines):
Symbol Table
Memory Map
The following output is heavily annotated for clarity and class discussion. You are not creating this output nor do we have means to check it. However, it should help you understand the operation and mapping of symbols etc.
Symbol Table
Memory Map
2: xy: E 2000 ->z
1004+0 = 1004
8002+0 = 8002
8001+5 = 8006
1002+5 = 1007
5001+11= 5012
E 7001 ->xy
E 1000 ->z
E 1000 ->z
E 3000 ->z
E 4000 ->z
E 1001 ->z
E 2000 ->xy
Note that even an empty program should have the “Symbol Table” and “Memory Map” line.
For a test case to pass you must catch ALL warning/errors and generate the correct output for a given input file. Example:
– Page 3 of 8 –
Programming Assignment #1 (Lab 1): Linker Professor Hubertus Franke Class CSCI-GA.2250-001: Operating Systems – Fall 2023
Symbol Table
Memory Map
Error: Absolute address exceeds machine size; zero used
Error: Relative address exceeds module size; relative zero used
Warning: Module 3: X31 was defined but never used
Parse errors should abort processing.
Error messages must be following the instruction as shown above. Warnings message locations are defined further down.
Module counting starts at 1.
I provide in C the code to print parse errors, which also gives you an indication what is considered a parse error.
void __parseerror(int errcode) {
static char* errstr[] = {
“NUM_EXPECTED”,
“SYM_EXPECTED”,
“MARIE_EXPECTED”,
“SYM_TOO_LONG”,
“TOO_MANY_DEF_IN_MODULE”,
“TOO_MANY_USE_IN_MODULE”,
“TOO_MANY_INSTR”,
// Number expect, anything >= 2^30 is not a number either // Symbol Expected
// Addressing Expected which is M/A/R/I/E
// Symbol Name is too long
// total num_instr exceeds memory size (512)
printf(“Parse Error line %d offset %d: %s\n”, linenum, lineoffset, errstr[errcode]); }
(Note: line numbers start with one and offsets in the line start with one, offsets should indicate the first character offset of the token that is wrong, not the last). Tabs (‘\t’) count as one character.
Error messages have the following text and should appear right at the end of the line you are printing out
“Error: Absolute address exceeds machine size; zero used”
“Error: Relative address exceeds module size; relative zero used”
“Error: External operand exceeds length of uselist; treated as relative=0”
“Error: %s is not defined; zero used” (insert the symbol name for %s) “Error: This variable is multiple times defined; first value used”
“Error: Illegal immediate operand; treated as 999”
“Error: Illegal opcode; treated as 9999”
“Error: Illegal module operand ; treated as module=0”
Warning messages have the following text and are on a separate line.
“Warning: Module %d: %s too big %d (max=%d) assume zero relative\n” “Warning: Module %d: %s redefinition ignored\n”
“Warning: Module %d: uselist[%d]=%s was not used\n”
“Warning: Module %d: %s was defined but never used\n”
(see rule 8) (see rule 9) (see rule 6) (see rule 3) (see rule 2)
(see rule 10)
(see rule 11) takes precedent (see rule 12)
(see rule 5) [ see input-4 ] (see rule 5) [-“-] (see rule 7)
(see rule 4)
Locations for these warnings are:
Rule 5: to be printed after each module in pass1
Rule 7: to be printed after each module in pass2 (so actually interspersed in the memory map (see out-9) Rule 4: to be printed after pass 2 (i.e. all modules have been processed) ( see out-3).
Parse Error Location:
Parse errors are to be located at the first character of the wrong token, or if end-of-file is reached at the end of file location.
– Page 4 of 8 –
程序代写 CS代考 加QQ: 749389476
Programming Assignment #1 (Lab 1): Linker Professor Hubertus Franke Class CSCI-GA.2250-001: Operating Systems – Fall 2023
There is one special case when the eof ends with `\n’. My expectation is that the line number reported actually exists in the file and that an editor (e.g. vi) can jump to it. In this particular case the linenumber to be reported is the last line read and the last position of that line, not the next line and offset 1 (see input-12 for an example). The error is at the very last position of the line. Reason is when one does a linecount on the file (“wc –l input-12”) it shows 3 not 4.
Hint: for each parser error and warning error mentioned above you should have code checking for that. Program Specification
Only C/C++ are allowed for this lab. The program should take a single command line argument for input file. The output of the program must go to standard output.
The program should run on the linserv1.cims.nyu.edu machine of NYU, which is where it will be graded, so please make sure your program runs there. We realize you code on your own machine and transferring to linserv1 machine exposes occasionally some linker errors. In that case use static linking (such as not finding the appropriate libraries at runtime), though hopefully that is now resolved with the “module” approach discussed at the end.
Testing your program before submission
As part of the lab1_assign.tar.Z in NYU Brightspace you will see a runit.sh and a gradeit.sh script (the same we will use for grading albeit with more inputs). Use “tar -xzvf lab1_assign.tar.Z” to decompress the file on a Unix machine. Understand the script and what it does. If you can’t pass this script, things will be flagged during the grading process as well. Don’t assume that just because you pass for these inputs, it will pass for all inputs. Carefully go through the rules above and ensure covered each rule with some code (if/then/else) and it is at the right location.
Execute as follows:
Create yourself a directory
> cd lab1_assign
> ./runit.sh
directory different
The above will create all the outputs for the available inputs (1-20)
> ./gradeit.sh .
The above will compare the reference outputs (out-[1-20]) with the ones created with your program and tell you how many you got right and which ones are wrong. There will be a file called
The reference program used during grading is located on /home/frankeh/Public/lab1/linker on cims systems. So feel free to try it in order to answer any questions you might have on what is expected for a particular input. An input generator is provided under /home/frankeh/Public/lab1/lab1gen.py
What to submit ( this applies to ALL labs )
Submit a zip archive containing only (i) source code (ii) makefile to compile your code (iii) ReadMe (If running the program is not straightforward, otherwise not required). Please make sure the zip does not have any input and/or output files nor contains other zip or tar files or backup files. We accept *.zip *.tar and *.tar.Z files ( as long as they match how they were created. Anything else will be returned for resubmission ( we use download tools based on those formats ) with 1 pts deduction.
– Page 5 of 8 –
# make your output
Programming Assignment #1 (Lab 1): Linker Professor Hubertus Franke Class CSCI-GA.2250-001: Operating Systems – Fall 2023
This lab is graded using a “diff –b –B -E” against the reference output created by the test program (aka reference program) using a grading harness described above ( runit.sh + gradeit.sh )
Inputs will be the ones provided in NYU Classes as well as other ones and will be checked for all of the error conditions. It is imperative that you match the output as generated by the ref program to allow for the automated testing for yourself as well. Use the harness instead of manual checking when you have the basics running, it tells you where things are wrong. We score this lab as 100pts. You will receive 40 pts for a submission that attempts to solve the problem. The rest you get 60/N points for each successful test that passes the “diff”. In order to institute a certain software engineering discipline, i.e. following a specification and avoiding unintended releases of code and data in real life, we account for the following additional deductions:
How to avoid
Makefile not working on CIMS or 1pt missing.
Late submission 2pts/day Inputs/Outputs or *.o files in the 1pt submission
Output not going to the screen but to a 1pt
Make sure your source compiles with your Makefile by simply typing “make”
Upto 7 days late allowed. No more submissions afterwards. Go through your intended submission and clean it up.
Storing Tokens instead of reparsing the file or storing Tokens when parsing a line. All you should store is the Symboltable between passes.
Follow instructions on parsing. After that, copy the shell of the parser for the 2nd pass. Close the file, reopen the file and parse again, just change the actions taken between 1st (error checking, module & symbol table creation) and 2nd pass (instruction transformation).
We utilize the output to
Incorrect Format submitted 1pt
Useful Stuff
How to approach this lab:
Step 1: Write a tokenizer
Use zip/tar tools to create a submission
Write a tokenizer that simply parses the input, prints the token and the position in the file found, at the end prints the final position in the file (as you will need that for error reporting). Verify it correctly recognizes tokens, lines and line offsets and also print the final error location as the last line read with last character in the line (not the next empty line).
Historically, getting this first step right and then layering
The functions you need to study for this are getline() or fgets() (reads a full line into a buffer) or C++ equivalent and strtok(), which tokenizes input lines. Please use Linux’s build-in help : “man strtok” and understand how a new line is seeded and continued in subsequent calls. My tokenizer executable is available on cims under /home/frankeh/Public/lab1/tokenizer (see what it produces on an input). You don’t have to match, its just a good way to start. Read the “man page”; it will tell you all you need to know how to use strtok (including examples and what to watch out for).
Your optional tokenizer program should probably look similar to the following and you will use the getToken() in step2+. main()
char *tok;
while( (tok = getToken()) != NULL ) {
printf(“token=<%s> position=%d:%d\n”, tok, linenum, lineoffset); printf(“EOF position %d:%d\n”, linenum, lineoff);
– Page 6 of 8 –
Programming Assignment #1 (Lab 1): Linker Professor Hubertus Franke Class CSCI-GA.2250-001: Operating Systems – Fall 2023
Step 2: Write basic token functions
Once you have the getToken() function written above and you verified that your token locations are properly reported, extract it out of the program above and start writing the linker program. Layer the readInt(), readSymbol(), readIAER() functions on top of it by checking that the token has the correct sequence of characters and length (e.g. integers are all numbers) and test via a simple program. Macros like isdigit(), isalpha(), isalnum()can proof useful.
Step 3: Write the parser
Here are some hints on writing a parser. In general one could write this parser using lex/yacc, however this is so simple that I suggest writing a simple recursive decent parser, in particular since you have to parse the input twice. In lex and yacc you would need to handle the error locations to conform to the specification. It would have a structure similar to the following (all pseudoCode). This structure is simply copied twice and the actions taken in each path are different.
Once you have the first pass written, reset the input file, copy the pass1() to pass2() and rewrite. Note, in pass2 certain error checking doesn’t have be done anymore. Instead you are now rewriting the instructions.
while (!eof) {
// this is a new model
int defcount = readInt();
for (int i=0;i
Programming Assignment #1 (Lab 1): Linker Professor Hubertus Franke Class CSCI-GA.2250-001: Operating Systems – Fall 2023
Here is a more sophisticated one that assumes multiple inputfiles: file1.c .. file3.c and allows to specify the compiler version
CFLAGS=-g # -g = debug, -O2 for optimized code CXXFLAGS for g++ CC=gcc-your-favorite-version
linker: file1.c file2.c file3.c
$(CC) $(CFLAGS) –o linker file1.c file2.c file3.c
Switching compiler versions on linserv1 it is strongly suggested you use gcc-9.2, the default 4.8.5 is old.
gcc –v or g++ -v # will tell you the currently active gcc version
module avail gcc # This will show you the list of all available modules module load gcc-9.2.0 # loads indicated gcc version (must be in avail list) module unload gcc-9.2.0 # reverts back to previous one (a “stack” is maintained)
# If you want to load a different version – first unload otherwise they stack
If you want to stick to 9.2.0 automatically when you log into a cims machine you can add the “module load gcc-9.2.0” to the end of your ~/.bash_profile file on cims and its automatic and one less thing to worry about.
It is imperative that you test your code on linserv1 and run ( runit.sh and gradeit.sh ). If there are errors go to the LOG.txt file created in the output directory and see what’s wrong and fix it. Note that code that runs fine on windows or MAC might not run correctly on Linux machines due to differences in layout and semantics of variable initialization etc.
The burden is on you, we will grade on linserv1 only.
– Page 8 of 8 –