Re: COFF Vs. Elf

rpereda@micro.ti.com (Ray Pereda)
Fri, 1 Dec 1995 16:53:15 GMT

          From comp.compilers

Related articles
COFF Vs. Elf 70004.2121@CompuServe.COM (Yahya Mirza) (1995-11-21)
Re: COFF Vs. Elf rpereda@micro.ti.com (1995-12-01)
| List of all articles for this month |

Newsgroups: comp.compilers
From: rpereda@micro.ti.com (Ray Pereda)
Keywords: linker
Organization: Compilers Central
References: 95-11-191
Date: Fri, 1 Dec 1995 16:53:15 GMT

> Yahya Mirza <70004.2121@CompuServe.COM> writes:
> Hi everybody,
>
> Has anbody out there written code using Elf vs. the COFF image
> file format. Is there any technical documents comparing the two
> with their benefits and drawbacks.
>


I've written code using COFF and am hoping to switch to ELF in the near
future. ELF is a more enhanced version of COFF. Its data structures
are more flexible than COFF. You don't have to throw out all of your old
COFF code to switch over to ELF.


I don't have much hands-on experience with ELF, but I can tell you that
COFF is entirely too rigid and can make changes to a linker quite painful.
ELF has some support for C++, but I don't know much of the details.


Check out the following document.


ELF: From The Programmer's Perspective
http://www.debian.org/Documentation/elf/elf.html


Look at the references in
http://www.cs.unc.edu/linux-docs/HOWTO/ELF-HOWTO.html


There is an excellent file that gives a detail spec of the ELF file format
at ftp://tsx-11.mit.edu/pub/linux/packages/GCC/ELF.doc.tar.gz


-Ray Pereda
rpereda@micro.ti.com
--


Post a followup to this message

Return to the comp.compilers page.
Search the comp.compilers archives again.