NAME

null_kludge − manipulate null_kludge ELF section to disable null pointer detection

SYNOPSIS

/usr/amiga/bin/null_kludge [-adq] files

DESCRIPTION

null_kludge adds, deletes, or detects a special ELF section which will cause a page of zeroes to appear at virtual address zero.  Such a section is useful to get a program to run even if it has harmless null-pointer dereferencing bugs.

Exactly one of the following options is in effect for any invocation of null_kludge:

-q (default)
Query. A zero exit status indicates the presence of a null_kludge section in all the files. (otherwise the exit status is the number of files which don’t contain such a section.) 

-a Add.  A null_kludge section is added to files.

-d Delete.  A null_kludge section is deleted from files. The -d option has not been implemented as of Amiga Unix version 2.0.

DIAGNOSTICS

null_kludge’s exit status is zero if all operations succeeded (or all files were found to contain a null_kludge section in query mode), or the number of files for which something went wrong.  An appropriate message is written to standard error output on any failure. 

SEE ALSO

elf(3e), a.out(4),

WARNING

Dereferencing a null pointer in the C language is illegal and the result is undefined.  This utility allows programs whose authors accidentally or intentionally relied on very particular "undefined" behavior on some machines (such as the VAX and 3B2) to operate in an acceptable manner under Amiga Unix.  Any programmer whose code needs this to work is a rotten egg.

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