A.2 COFF Debugging Format

COFF symbolic debug is obsolete. These directives are supported for backwards-compatibility only. The decision to switch to DWARF as the symbolic debug format was made to overcome many limitations of COFF symbolic debug, including the absence of C++ support.

The COFF debugging format consists of the following directives:

• The .sym directive defines a global variable, a local variable, or a function. Several parameters allow you to associate various debugging information with the variable or function.
• The .stag, .etag, and .utag directives define structures, enumerations, and unions, respectively. The .member directive specifies a member of a structure, enumeration, or union. The .eos directive ends a structure, enumeration, or union definition.
• The .func and .endfunc directives specify the beginning and ending lines of a C/C++ function.
• The .block and .endblock directives specify the bounds of C/C++ blocks.
• The .file directive defines a symbol in the symbol table that identifies the current source filename.
• The .line directive identifies the line number of a C/C++ source statement.