section

The meaning of the terms segment and section are interchangeable in this topic.

Once a section is defined, it remains valid for the remainder of the compilation. However, you must use __declspec(allocate) or nothing will be placed in the section.

section-name is a required parameter that will be the name of the section. The name must not conflict with any standard section names. See /SECTION for a list of names you should not use when creating a section.

attributes is an optional parameter consisting of one or more comma-separated attributes that you want to assign to the section. Possible attributes are:

read

Allows read operations on data.

write

Allows write operations on data.

execute

Allows code to be executed.

shared

Shares the section among all processes that load the image.

nopage

Marks the section as not pageable; useful for Win32 device drivers.

nocache

Marks the section as not cacheable; useful for Win32 device drivers.

discard

Marks the section as discardable; useful for Win32 device drivers.

remove

Marks the section as not memory-resident; virtual device drivers (VxD) only.

If you do not specify attributes, the section will have read and write attributes.

In the following example, the first instruction identifies the section and its attributes. The integer j is not put into mysec because it was not declared with __declspec(allocate); j goes into the data section. The integer i does go into mysec as a result of its __declspec(allocate) storage-class attribute.

// pragma_section.cpp
#pragma section("mysec",read,write)
int j = 0;

__declspec(allocate("mysec"))
int i = 0;

int main(){}

Reference