2.2.2 E8 Call Translation

E8 call translation is an optional feature that can be used when the data to compress contains x86 instruction sequences. E8 translation operates as a preprocessing stage before compressing each chunk, and the compressed stream header contains a bit that indicates whether the decoder shall reverse the translation as a postprocessing step after decompressing each chunk.

The x86 instruction beginning with a byte value of 0xE8 is followed by a 32-bit, little-endian relative displacement to the call target. When E8 call translation is enabled, the following preprocessing steps are performed on the uncompressed input before compression (assuming little-endian byte ordering):

Let chunk_offset refer to the total number of uncompressed bytes preceding this chunk.

Let E8_file_size refer to the caller-specified value given to the compressor or decoded from the header of the compressed stream during decompression.

The following example shows how E8 translation is performed for each 32-KB chunk of uncompressed data (or less than 32 KB if last chunk to compress).

 if (( chunk_offset < 0x40000000 ) && ( chunk_size > 10 ))
    for ( i = 0; i < (chunk_size – 10); i++ )
 if ( chunk_byte[ i ] == 0xE8 )
    long current_pointer = chunk_offset + i;
 long displacement =    chunk_byte[ i+1 ] |
 chunk_byte[ i+2 ] << 8  |
 chunk_byte[ i+3 ] << 16 |
 chunk_byte[ i+4 ] << 24;
 long target = current_pointer + displacement;
 if (( target >= 0 ) && ( target < E8_file_size+current_pointer))
 if ( target >= E8_file_size )
 target = displacement – E8_file_size;
 endif
 chunk_byte[ i+1 ] = (byte)( target );
 chunk_byte[ i+2 ] = (byte)( target >> 8 );
 chunk_byte[ i+3 ] = (byte)( target >> 16 );
 chunk_byte[ i+4 ] = (byte)( target >> 24 );
 endif
    i += 4;
 endif
 endfor
 endif

After decompression, the E8 scanning algorithm is the same. The following example shows how E8 translation reversal is performed.

 long value =    chunk_byte[ i+1 ]       |
 chunk_byte[ i+2 ] << 8  |
 chunk_byte[ i+3 ] << 16 |
 chunk_byte[ i+4 ] << 24;
  
 if (( value >= -current_pointer ) && ( value < E8_file_size ))
 if ( value >= 0 )
 displacement = value – current_pointer;
 else
 displacement = value + E8_file_size;
 endif
 chunk_byte[ i+1 ] = (byte)( displacement );
 chunk_byte[ i+2 ] = (byte)( displacement >> 8 );
 chunk_byte[ i+3 ] = (byte)( displacement >> 16 );
 chunk_byte[ i+4 ] = (byte)( displacement >> 24 );
 endif

The first bit in the first chunk in the LZXD bitstream (following the 2-byte, chunk-size prefix described in section 2.2.1) indicates the presence or absence of two 16-bit fields immediately following the single bit. If the bit is set, E8 translation is enabled for all the following chunks in the stream using the 32-bit value derived from the two 16-bit fields as the E8_file_size provided to the compressor when E8 translation was enabled. Note that E8_file_size is completely independent of the length of the uncompressed data. E8 call translation is disabled after the 32,768th chunk (after 1 gigabyte (GB) of uncompressed data).

Field	Comments	Size
E8 translation	0-disabled, 1-enabled	1 bit
Translation size high word	Only present if enabled	0 or 16 bits
Translation size low word	Only present if enabled	0 or 16 bits