How to get a pointer to a binary section in MSVC?

Question

I\'m writing some code which stores some data structures in a special named binary section. These are all instances of the same struct which are scattered across many C file

Answer 1

First of all, you'll need to create an ASM-file containing all the sections you are interested (for ex., section.asm):

.686
.model flat

PUBLIC C __InitSectionStart
PUBLIC C __InitSectionEnd

INIT$A SEGMENT DWORD PUBLIC FLAT alias(".init$a")
        __InitSectionStart EQU $
INIT$A ENDS

INIT$Z SEGMENT DWORD PUBLIC FLAT alias(".init$z")
        __InitSectionEnd EQU $
INIT$Z ENDS

END

Next, in your code you can use the following:

#pragma data_seg(".init$u")
int token1 = 0xdeadbeef;
int token2 = 0xdeadc0de;
#pragma data_seg()

This gives such a MAP-file:

 Start         Length     Name                   Class
 0003:00000000 00000000H .init$a                 DATA
 0003:00000000 00000008H .init$u                 DATA
 0003:00000008 00000000H .init$z                 DATA

  Address         Publics by Value              Rva+Base       Lib:Object
 0003:00000000       ?token1@@3HA               10005000     dllmain.obj
 0003:00000000       ___InitSectionStart        10005000     section.obj
 0003:00000004       ?token2@@3HA               10005004     dllmain.obj
 0003:00000008       ___InitSectionEnd          10005008     section.obj

So, as you can see it, the section with the name .init$u is placed between .init$a and .init$z and this gives you ability to get the pointer to the begin of the data via __InitSectionStart symbol and to the end of data via __InitSectionEnd symbol.