New subject: [PATCH v3 2/2] Tests for the ".emit_strings" functionality in the BTF dumper.

3 Jun 2025

The BTF dumper code currently displays arrays of characters as just that -
arrays, with each character formatted individually. Sometimes this is what
makes sense, but it's nice to be able to treat that array as a string.
This change adds a special case to the btf_dump functionality to allow
0-terminated arrays of single-byte integer values to be printed as
character strings. Characters for which isprint() returns false are
printed as hex-escaped values. This is enabled when the new ".emit_strings"
is set to 1 in the btf_dump_type_data_opts structure.
As an example, here's what it looks like to dump the string "hello" using
a few different field values for btf_dump_type_data_opts (.compact = 1):
- .emit_strings = 0, .skip_names = 0:  (char[6])['h','e','l','l','o',]
- .emit_strings = 0, .skip_names = 1:  ['h','e','l','l','o',]
- .emit_strings = 1, .skip_names = 0:  (char[6])"hello"
- .emit_strings = 1, .skip_names = 1:  "hello"
Here's the string "h\xff", dumped with .compact = 1 and .skip_names = 1:
- .emit_strings = 0:  ['h',-1,]
- .emit_strings = 1:  "h\xff"
Signed-off-by: Blake Jones blakejones@google.com
---
 tools/lib/bpf/btf.h      |  3 ++-
 tools/lib/bpf/btf_dump.c | 55 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++-
 2 files changed, 56 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

diff --git a/tools/lib/bpf/btf.h b/tools/lib/bpf/btf.h
index 4392451d634b..ccfd905f03df 100644
--- a/tools/lib/bpf/btf.h
+++ b/tools/lib/bpf/btf.h
@@ -326,9 +326,10 @@ struct btf_dump_type_data_opts {
    bool compact;		/* no newlines/indentation */
    bool skip_names;	/* skip member/type names */
    bool emit_zeroes;	/* show 0-valued fields */
+	bool emit_strings;	/* print char arrays as strings */
    size_t :0;
 };
-#define btf_dump_type_data_opts__last_field emit_zeroes
+#define btf_dump_type_data_opts__last_field emit_strings
LIBBPF_API int
 btf_dump__dump_type_data(struct btf_dump *d, __u32 id,
diff --git a/tools/lib/bpf/btf_dump.c b/tools/lib/bpf/btf_dump.c
index 460c3e57fadb..7c2f1f13f958 100644
--- a/tools/lib/bpf/btf_dump.c
+++ b/tools/lib/bpf/btf_dump.c
@@ -68,6 +68,7 @@ struct btf_dump_data {
    bool compact;
    bool skip_names;
    bool emit_zeroes;
+	bool emit_strings;
    __u8 indent_lvl;	/* base indent level */
    char indent_str[BTF_DATA_INDENT_STR_LEN];
    /* below are used during iteration */
@@ -2028,6 +2029,52 @@ static int btf_dump_var_data(struct btf_dump *d,
    return btf_dump_dump_type_data(d, NULL, t, type_id, data, 0, 0);
 }
+static int btf_dump_string_data(struct btf_dump *d,
+				const struct btf_type *t,
+				__u32 id,
+				const void *data)
+{
+	const struct btf_array *array = btf_array(t);
+	const char *chars = data;
+	__u32 i;
+
+	/* Make sure it is a NUL-terminated string. */
+	for (i = 0; i < array->nelems; i++) {
+		if ((void *)(chars + i) >= d->typed_dump->data_end)
+			return -E2BIG;
+		if (chars[i] == '\0')
+			break;
+	}
+	if (i == array->nelems) {
+		/* The caller will print this as a regular array. */
+		return -EINVAL;
+	}
+
+	btf_dump_data_pfx(d);
+	btf_dump_printf(d, """);
+
+	for (i = 0; i < array->nelems; i++) {
+		char c = chars[i];
+
+		if (c == '\0') {
+			/*
+			 * When printing character arrays as strings, NUL bytes
+			 * are always treated as string terminators; they are
+			 * never printed.
+			 */
+			break;
+		}
+		if (isprint(c))
+			btf_dump_printf(d, "%c", c);
+		else
+			btf_dump_printf(d, "\x%02x", (__u8)c);
+	}
+
+	btf_dump_printf(d, """);
+
+	return 0;
+}
+
 static int btf_dump_array_data(struct btf_dump *d,
    		       const struct btf_type *t,
    		       __u32 id,
@@ -2055,8 +2102,13 @@ static int btf_dump_array_data(struct btf_dump *d,
    	 * char arrays, so if size is 1 and element is
    	 * printable as a char, we'll do that.
    	 */
-		if (elem_size == 1)
+		if (elem_size == 1) {
+			if (d->typed_dump->emit_strings &&
+			    btf_dump_string_data(d, t, id, data) == 0) {
+				return 0;
+			}
    		d->typed_dump->is_array_char = true;
+		}
    }
/* note that we increment depth before calling btf_dump_print() below;
@@ -2544,6 +2596,7 @@ int btf_dump__dump_type_data(struct btf_dump *d, __u32 id,
    d->typed_dump->compact = OPTS_GET(opts, compact, false);
    d->typed_dump->skip_names = OPTS_GET(opts, skip_names, false);
    d->typed_dump->emit_zeroes = OPTS_GET(opts, emit_zeroes, false);
+	d->typed_dump->emit_strings = OPTS_GET(opts, emit_strings, false);
ret = btf_dump_dump_type_data(d, NULL, t, id, data, 0, 0);
-- 
2.49.0.1204.g71687c7c1d-goog



    

[PATCH v3 1/2] libbpf: add support for printing BTF character arrays as strings

Signed-off-by: Blake Jones blakejones@google.com

Signed-off-by: Blake Jones blakejones@google.com