Ask HN: Help with doing statistics over machine code

2•phafu•8mo ago

I'd like to do some statistics over the machine code gcc generates, such as a histogram of used instructions, average volatile/preserved registers usage of functions etc. For now just x86_64 SysV-ABI would be enough.

However I'm not aware of any pre-existing tool that lets me easily do this. The options I currently see are either make gcc output assembly and write a parser for the GNU Assembler format (possibly by reusing the asm-parser of the compiler-explorer project), or write a tool that reads (disassembles) object files directly using elfutils.

Any hints, prior work, further ideas, links to useful resources, or any other kind of help would be much appreciated.

Comments

baobun•8mo ago

"Static analysis" should be a relevant search term. Assuming you don't need to tie the instructions back to C code then the "gcc" part seems circumstancial for implementation? I guess you might want to parse the ASM into an Abstract Syntax Tree (AST) represenation and work on that?

If you do want to tie it back to the source, this looks relevant: http://icps.u-strasbg.fr/~pop/gcc-ast.html

phafu•8mo ago

For my purpose I don't need to get back to the original source, no.

The gcc part is only relevant with regards to what dialect of assembler I need to parse. If I go that route, I'd write a parser for the GNU assembler, and that would of course work with any code in that dialect, regardless from which compiler it came from (I haven't checked whether other compilers can produce GNU assembler though).

Link Shortening Tools Are High Risk

Microsoft Has Killed Widgets Six Times. Here's Why They Keep Coming Back

39C3 – Celestial navigation with little math

Embedded Vector and Graph Database in Pure Go

French government may consider restricting VPNs

A few thoughts about PayPal, nearly 12 years after I left

Nvidia RTX 5070 Ti with a hole in the PCB manages to score a world record

Show HN: DeepInsight HITL AI research with collaboration and podcast generation

Code is getting cheaper. Building is not

The debt I cannot repay, by Claude

Is there a good way to manage GTM experiments, or is it inevitably ad-hoc?

Show HN: Iterio – Study timer with spaced repetition built in

Ask HN: Where does modern geometry survive contact with SGD?

If you tell AI not to do something, it's more likely to do it

We added TOON compression to our LLM gateway – compress prompts, saves tokens

Show HN: A personal feed that turns videos/podcasts/blogs into Twitter-y threads

Hexapawn: Variant of Chess with 6 Pieces

Show HN: Chitram – Open-source image hosting with automatic AI tagging

Show HN: Video2docs – Turn Screen Recordings into Step-by-Step Instructions

Show HN: Trappsec – detect attackers probing API business logic

Show HN: Continuity Capsule – Deterministic restarts for LLM agents

Show HN: Continuity Capsule – deterministic restarts for long-running LLM agents

Do Retention Ponds Work?

Show HN: Free Wealth management in one app (gold, stock, MF, budget etc.)

"This Job Sucks": DOJ Attorney Asks Judge to Hold Her in Contempt

Show HN:OpenClaw Skills-Discover, compare skills with clear risk signals

Sudo maintainer is looking for help

Catalina Island's private landowner moves forward on killing all its deer

My Hardest Bug Ever (2013)

A copyleft draft license for datasets. You take my data, you give your data