. (location counter)

The period character ( .) always maintains the current position of the output location. Since the period always refers to a location in a SECTIONS block, it can not be used outside a section definition.

A period may appear anywhere a symbol is allowed. Assigning a value to period that is greater than its current value causes the location counter to move, but the location counter can never be decremented.

This effect can be used to create empty space in an output section. In the example below, the location counter is moved to a position that is 0x1000 words past the symbol FSTART_.

Example

.data :

{

     *(.data)

     *(.bss)

     FSTART_ = .;

     . = FSTART_ + 0x1000;

     __end = .;

} > DATA