Can ELF symbols be represented in UTF8?

Question

May a symbol in the ELF table use UTF8 characters or is it restricted to ASCII?

Note: It is not a problem that I am trying to solve, it is more something I am wondering.

Answer 1

ELF string tables use NUL-terminated strings, so you could possibly store UTF-8 encoded symbol names inside them.

That said, the tools that use such symbols would need to be Unicode-aware to work correctly. For example:

• Whether your programming language tool chain correctly classifies a specified Unicode 'character' as a letter, a numeral or punctuation.
• Whether scripts that are written right-to-left (or top-to-bottom) can be used.
• Whether symbols written in complex scripts (Arabic, Thai, etc) are rendered correctly by your system.
• Whether characters from different scripts can be mixed when creating a symbol.
• Whether sorting works as expected, for those tools that have to produce sorted outputs.

... etc.