Apple M1 / AArch64 .data section not recognised as such

[p-Wave]

Hi all,

I have the following "Hello World" code:

.global _start
.align 2

.text
_start: mov X0, 1
        adrp X1, helloworld@PAGE
        mov X2, 13
        mov X16, 4
        svc 0x80

        mov     X0, 0
        mov     X16, 1
        svc     0x80
.data
helloworld:      .ascii  "Hello World!\n"

which I compile with

Apple clang version 13.0.0 (clang-1300.0.29.3)
Target: arm64-apple-darwin21.1.0

the CodeBrowser in Ghidra doesn't recognise the data section, but instead gives me the following interpretation (starting at 0x20) :

                             //
                             // __text 
                             // __TEXT
                             // ram:00000000-ram:0000001f
                             //
                             **************************************************************
                             *                                                            *
                             *  FUNCTION                                                  *
                             **************************************************************
                             undefined ltmp0()
             undefined         w0:1           <RETURN>
                             _start                                          XREF[1]:     Entry Point(*)  
                             ltmp0
        00000000 20 00 80 d2     mov        x0,#0x1
        00000004 01 00 00 90     adrp       x1,0x0
        00000008 a2 01 80 d2     mov        x2,#0xd
        0000000c 90 00 80 d2     mov        x16,#0x4
        00000010 01 10 00 d4     svc        0x80
        00000014 00 00 80 d2     mov        x0,#0x0
        00000018 30 00 80 d2     mov        x16,#0x1
        0000001c 01 10 00 d4     svc        0x80
                             //
                             // __data 
                             // __DATA
                             // ram:00000020-ram:0000002c
                             //
                             ltmp1
                             helloworld
        00000020 48 65 6c 6c     ldnp       d8,d25,[x10, #-0x140]
        00000024 6f 20 57 6f     umlal2     v15.4S,v3.8H,v7.H[0x1]
        00000028 72              ??         72h    r
        00000029 6c              ??         6Ch    l
        0000002a 64              ??         64h    d
        0000002b 21              ??         21h    !
        0000002c 0a              ??         0Ah

What am I missing/ doing wrong?

Thank you very much!

[ryanmkurtz]

Can you attach your binary?

[p-Wave]

I think I might have found a cause. If I pass the object file to Ghidra, the above occurs. If I give it the linked executable, everything looks good. I attached both files, so maybe you can give me your opinion whether it should work with only the object file or not.
HelloWorld2.zip

Thank you!

[ryanmkurtz]

It looks like we are disassembling the data section of the object file, so something is wrong. I'm going to convert this discussion to an issue.

[ryanmkurtz]

See #3665