> It probably shouldn't do that if you create a dynamic library that needs a symbol table but for an ELF binary it could, no?

It can't do that because the program might load a dynamic library that depends on the function (it's perfectly OK for a `.so` to depend on a function from the main executable, for example).

That's one of the reasons why a very cheap optimization is to always use `static` for functions when you can. You're telling the compiler that the function doesn't need to be visible outside the current compilation unit, so the compiler is free to even inline it completely and never produce an actual callable function, if appropriate.