Date: Sat, 08 Nov 1997 18:07:21 -0700 From: Warner Losh <imp@village.org> To: njs3@doc.ic.ac.uk (Niall Smart) Cc: hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: a.out format Message-ID: <199711090107.SAA15626@harmony.village.org> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sat, 08 Nov 1997 22:55:27 GMT." <E0xUJmp-0000Y7-00@oak65.doc.ic.ac.uk> References: <E0xUJmp-0000Y7-00@oak65.doc.ic.ac.uk>
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In message <E0xUJmp-0000Y7-00@oak65.doc.ic.ac.uk> Niall Smart writes: : Don't suppose anyone knows how the "a.out" format got its name? "ld foo.o" used to produce (and still does) a file called a.out by default. It used to be the only format. Now, that there are others, you gotta call it something :-). Where the name a.out came from is generally believed to be short for "assembler output" but there has been some other rumors I've heard over the years. Kinda like .bss (which is supposedly from an old IBM op code for Blank Storage Section, which was all zeros, but I'm digressing). Warner
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