How to explore the functions in .A library file

Question

I created a .A and a corresponding .dll file from mingw. This is to be run on windows. Now I am attempting to interface and use the function in the .A library from a different component and I am getting a linker error. I wanted to make sure if my functions were exported properly. I therefore followed this link and decided to do this

> lib.exe /list libSomeLibrary.a

as a result I get something like this

d001861.o
d001862.o
d001863.o
d001864.o
d001865.o
d001866.o
d001867.o
d001868.o
d001869.o
d001870.o
d001871.o
d001872.o
d001873.o
d001874.o
d001875.o
d001876.o
d001877.o
d001878.o
d001879.o
d001880.o
d001881.o
d001882.o
d001883.o
....
....

Is this correct. Is there a way for me to actually get the names of the functions in the lib file.

Answer 1

Since you are using MinGW, you may use the nm command to list the contents of any libfoo.a archive file; used thus:

nm -A libfoo.a | more

(or better still, if you have the less command, e.g. in MinGW's MSYS shell environment):

nm -A libfoo.a | less

it will list all symbols specified within the archive, grouped and qualified by the name of the embedded object file which provides each one.