What does “symbol value” from nm command mean?

Question

When you list the symbol table of a static library, like nm mylib.a, what does the 8 digit hex that show up next to each symbol mean? Is that the relative locat

Answer 1

The hex numeral is the memory offset into the object files where the symbol can be found. It's literally the number of bytes into the object code.

That value is used by the linker to locate and make a copy of the symbol's value. You can see generally how it's laid out if you add the -S option to nm, which will show you the size of the value for each symbol.