1@findex bfd_get_mtime 2@subsubsection @code{bfd_get_mtime} 3@strong{Synopsis} 4@example 5long bfd_get_mtime (bfd *abfd); 6@end example 7@strong{Description}@* 8Return the file modification time (as read from the file system, or 9from the archive header for archive members). 10 11@findex bfd_get_size 12@subsubsection @code{bfd_get_size} 13@strong{Synopsis} 14@example 15long bfd_get_size (bfd *abfd); 16@end example 17@strong{Description}@* 18Return the file size (as read from file system) for the file 19associated with BFD @var{abfd}. 20 21The initial motivation for, and use of, this routine is not 22so we can get the exact size of the object the BFD applies to, since 23that might not be generally possible (archive members for example). 24It would be ideal if someone could eventually modify 25it so that such results were guaranteed. 26 27Instead, we want to ask questions like "is this NNN byte sized 28object I'm about to try read from file offset YYY reasonable?" 29As as example of where we might do this, some object formats 30use string tables for which the first @code{sizeof (long)} bytes of the 31table contain the size of the table itself, including the size bytes. 32If an application tries to read what it thinks is one of these 33string tables, without some way to validate the size, and for 34some reason the size is wrong (byte swapping error, wrong location 35for the string table, etc.), the only clue is likely to be a read 36error when it tries to read the table, or a "virtual memory 37exhausted" error when it tries to allocate 15 bazillon bytes 38of space for the 15 bazillon byte table it is about to read. 39This function at least allows us to answer the question, "is the 40size reasonable?". 41 42