(dot) is a link to the directory itself, and .. (dot-dot) is a link to the parent directory in the directory
hierarchy
Single-bit connections are shown as dotted lines. These represent control values passed between the
units and blocks on the chip.
In the assembly code, some lines beginning with .what are these lines for?
In the compilation process, what program (other than the assembler) uses these lines?
Symbol dot (.) refers to the address of the beginning of the current assembly statement. The dot (.)
following a name can be an assembler directive or local symbol. The assembler directive holds specific
instructions, such as section names with a dot (.) as a prefix being reserved for the system’s use.
The linker resolves all the references in a set of object, .o files
Section names with a dot (.) prefix are reserved for the system,
● Symbol names that begin with a dot ( . ) are assumed to be local symbols. To simplify debugging,
avoid using this type of symbol name in hand-coded assembly language routines.
symbol dot ( . ) is predefined and always refers to the address of the beginning of the current assembly
language statement.
A dot preceding a name is either an assembler directive or a local label.
An assembler directive tells as to do something special, for example .text tells it to generate
data in the text section of the object file (for things like code and literals that cannot be
changed). There's also directives like .space which tell it to allocate empty space in the
object file, this is often used to allocate space in the bss section.
On the other hand, we have local labels like .L1 that are used in the code but aren't meant to
be exported in the object file and should be hidden from the symbol table.
just a symbol, which is the name for a section, and this name is referred in the linker script