Glossary
Symbol Table
A section of a binary that maps function and variable names to their addresses, present in debug or non-stripped builds.
A symbol table is a data structure embedded in a binary (typically in ELF Format .symtab/.dynsym sections or in Windows PDB files) that maps human-readable names — function names, global variable names, type information — to their runtime addresses. Symbol tables are generated during compilation and linking but are usually removed (see stripped binary) before release to shrink file size and hinder reverse engineering. When available, a symbol table transforms a disassembler output from a sea of sub_xxxxxxxx labels into named, navigable functions.