top button
Flag Notify
    Connect to us
      Site Registration

Site Registration

What is the difference between elf and a.out ?

+4 votes
1,466 views

ELF => Executive Linkage Format.

posted Nov 8, 2013 by Anuj Yadav

Share this question
Facebook Share Button Twitter Share Button LinkedIn Share Button

2 Answers

+3 votes

ELF (Executable and Linking Format) is a binary format originally developed by USL (UNIX System Laboratories) and currently used in Solaris and System V Release 4. Because of its increased flexibility over the older a.out format that Linux previously used, the GCC and C library developers decided to move to using ELF as the Linux standard binary format also.

answer Nov 8, 2013 by Deepankar Dubey
+1 vote

The a.out format forced shared libraries to occupy a fixed place in memory. If you wanted to distribute an a.out shared library, you had to register its address space. This was good for performance but it didn't scale at all.

By contrast, in ELF, shared libraries can be loaded anywhere in memory, and can even appear to be at different addresses to different applications running on the same computer (with the code still effectively loaded in only one place in physical memory)

answer Nov 8, 2013 by anonymous
Similar Questions
+3 votes

As far as I know boot loader is the one who loads OS from ROM to RAM, then why Boot Loader is different as per OS.
And what is boot manager? Is Boot Manager is different as per OS?

+5 votes

Which one is better for which situation ??

0 votes

Can someone please explain using any example ?

...