# The string table chunk (OBJ_STRT)

The string table chunk contains all the print names referred to from the header and symbol table chunks. This separation is made to factor out the variable length characteristic of print names from the key data structures.

A print name is stored in the string table as a sequence of non-control characters (codes 32-126 and 160-255) terminated by a NUL (0) byte, and is identified by an offset from the start of the table. The first 4 bytes of the string table contain its length (including the length of its length word), so no valid offset into the table is less than 4, and no table has length less than 4.

The endian-ness of the length word shall be identical to the endian-ness of the AOF and chunk files containing it.