Talk:nm (Unix)

This article is rated Stub-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.
It is of interest to the following WikiProjects:

Computing

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Computing, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of computers, computing, and information technology on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.ComputingWikipedia:WikiProject ComputingTemplate:WikiProject ComputingComputing articles
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the project's importance scale.
	This article has been automatically rated by a bot or other tool as Stub-class because it uses a stub template. Please ensure the assessment is correct before removing the `\|auto=` parameter.

Nm (UNIX) survived vfd. See: talk:Nm (UNIX)/Delete. Wile E. Heresiarch 02:11, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)

nm?[edit]

What does nm stand for? --Abdull (talk) 09:58, 29 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I always assumed "name" or "names", as in "list the names in this object file". JöG (talk) 22:01, 4 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe "name mangling" according to its use, but shortname for "name" also fits (similar in construction to mv, cp, ls and ln). Choose your best mnemonics. Teuxe (talk) 12:37, 3 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Not architecture-specific[edit]

I am removing the part of the article which goes:

As with other parts of the GNU toolchain, a given nm binary is compiled only for a specific computer architecture and binary format, and so security specialists who use nm to examine suspect binary files typically keep a number of "foreign target" nm binaries prebuilt.

because it is provably false. I could use an x86-64 nm on these ELF files for three different architectures:

foo.o:      ELF 32-bit MSB relocatable, SPARC, version 1 (SYSV), not stripped
motorola.o: ELF 32-bit MSB relocatable, PowerPC or cisco 4500, version 1 (SYSV), not stripped
bar.o:      ELF 64-bit LSB relocatable, AMD x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), not stripped

JöG (talk) 22:01, 4 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Since it is the decoding of a file content and no code execution is involved, you're totally right as long as the command implementation knows the binary file format. Teuxe (talk) 12:40, 3 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]