Re: "a.out"

[eichin@cygnus.com]

Umm, I don't know what the "Magic Garden Explained" book is, but it's,
well, *wrong*, if you rendition of it is accurate.

a.out is one format; COFF is another (and it's Common Object *File*
Format); ELF is yet another. a.out is real simple -- the header
contains a couple of addresses and that's basically it. There is a
"string table" which is filled in with assembler ".stab" directives;
this is used for debugging (-g) info, and is thus called "stabs"
debugging records. COFF is a lot more complicated, it has named
sections, and a very C-specific debugging format tied to it. ELF is
more general, and has a more advanced debugging format tied to it --
which doesn't get used much either; it's fairly common, especially
with the GNU tools, to use use a COFF or ELF named section to hold
STABS debug information.

LInux can run COFF files -- if you've got the iBCS2 package (for SCO
compatibility) installed.

					_Mark_ <eichin@cygnus.com>
					Cygnus Support, Eastern USA
ps. yes, we do extensive work on *all* of these formats in our tools;
no, we don't do compiler support for linux yet :-)