Editing Symbol table (section)

==Applications==
An [[object file]] will contain a symbol table of the identifiers it contains that are externally visible.  During the linking of different object files, a [[Linker (computing)|linker]] will identify and resolve these symbol references. Usually all undefined external symbols will be searched for in one or more [[Library (computing)|object libraries]]. If a module is found that defines that symbol it is linked together with the first object file, and any undefined external identifiers are added to the list of identifiers to be looked up. This process continues until all external references have been resolved. It is an error if one or more remains unresolved at the end of the process.

While [[reverse engineering]] an executable, many tools refer to the symbol table to check what addresses have been assigned to global variables and known functions. If the symbol table has been [[strip (Unix)|stripped]] or cleaned out before being converted into an executable, tools will find it harder to determine addresses or understand anything about the program.