Misaligned address in linker idea

[dicarlo236]

I noticed the same thing you did - the game's linker seems to write out misaligned addresses sometimes!
(

goaldis/goaldis/link.cpp

Line 535 in a3a8987

final_addr &= ~3;

) and I think I know what's happening.

I believe this misalignment actually intended: all the misaligned addresses I've seen so far have 2 in the bottom 3 bits. In GOAL, a pair is different from other objects. Instead of having a type pointer in front of the object, a pair is stored as the pointer to the pair + 2. There's a similar trick done on some integers.

If you check load-boundary-h.go, load-boundary.go, and load-boundary-data.go, it looks like there's a lot of data stored in a linked list/tree made of pairs. Linking the part that has this data structure causes lots of misaligned addresses when linking.

[rmitton]

Hmm, certainly a possibility! A bit odd nonetheless.
Nice find!