How to embed binary objects in your executable.

README.md

Shows how to embed binary objects directly in your executable by the linker.

The alternative would be to parse the file and put it in a C-array, which I think is inelegant.

Useful when you want to embed stuff like graphics, media files and so on in your executable.

To run, just type make.

a.c

#include <stdio.h>

/*
 * To get the name of the foo.o char section, use `objdump -x foo.o`.
 */
extern char _binary_foo_txt_start[];

int main()
{
    char *p = _binary_foo_txt_start;
    printf("first 10 chars of foo.txt: '%.10s'\n", p);
    return 0;
}

foo.txt

This is sentence one. This is sentence two.
This is the third and final sentence.

Makefile

TARGETS = a.o foo.o a

run: a
	./a

all: $(TARGETS)

foo.o: foo.txt
	ld -r -b binary -o $@ $<

a: foo.o a.o

clean:
	rm -f $(TARGETS)

Output:

$ make
cc    -c -o a.o a.c
ld -r -b binary -o foo.o foo.txt
cc   a.o foo.o   -o a
./a
first 10 chars of foo.txt: 'This is se'