4.2 Grouped Sections (Object Only)

The "$" character (dollar sign) has a special interpretation in section names in object files.

When determining the image section that will contain the contents of an object section, the linker discards the "$" and all characters following it. Thus, an object section named .text$X will actually contribute to the .text section in the image.

However, the characters following the "$" determine the ordering of the contributions to the image section. All contributions with the same object-section name will be allocated contiguously in the image, and the blocks of contributions will be sorted in lexical order by object-section name. Therefore, everything in object files with section name .text$X will end up together, after the .text$W contributions and before the .text$Y contributions.

The section name in an image file will never contain a "$" character.