elf-info: ergonomic CLI ELF inspection tool

elf-info can inspect and display information about ELF binaries, the executable format mostly used on Linux. This CLI tools aims at being ergonomic, without the need of using two different commands (objdump and readelf) that have impossible to remember options.

elf-info commands and options are easy to remember yet short and easy to type. Efforts are made on the presentation of the data, using colors and ASCII tables.

For better ergonomics, you can set a ELF environment variable so not to have to repeat the file name on each command.

Quick and ergonomic disassembly

The fn subcommand is my favorite: give it a function’s name and its full pretty-formatted disassembly is displayed.

By passing --cfi you can superimpose call frame information (CFI):

Symbol tables

You can quickly list all symbols, and demangle the names.

Pass --no-demangle for not demangling.
Pass -l / -g / -w / -d to only display local / global / weak / defined symbols.
Pass -t <TYPE> to filter by symbol type.
Pass -D to only display dynamic symbols.
Pass -f to filter by symbol name using a regular expression.

Sections

List all sections

Show specific section content

String table sections

For some type of sections, elf-info is able to interpret its content and display it in a more usable way. For example, for a table of strings, all strings are listed. You can add the option -x or --hexdump to always display a hexdump.

.eh_frame_hdr section

In the same way, elf-info can pretty print the content of .eh_frame_hdr.

ELF header

Program headers

Clear and structured exception-handling information

Quickly find EH information for a specific symbol with -s: