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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.rmit.EDU.AU!news.unimelb.EDU.AU!munnari.OZ.AU!spool.mu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!in1.uu.net!cs.utexas.edu!atlantis.utmb.edu!news.tamu.edu!baja.pacificrim.net!olympic!khan From: khan@olympic.pacificrim.net (Khan Klatt) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: ELF Date: 18 Dec 1995 21:09:21 -0800 Organization: Pacific Rim Network, Inc. Lines: 21 Message-ID: <khan.819349597@olympic> References: <4avq5m$7rk@complete.org> NNTP-Posting-Host: olympic.pacificrim.net jgoerzen@complete.org (John Goerzen) writes: >Can somebody please tell me what ELF stands for, what it is, and why it is >beneficial? ELF stands for Executable and Linkable Format (afaik) It is an alternate binary format as opposed to QMAGIC a.out format. I assume that it has to do with shared libraries and how the binaries deal with them, among other things. To make a long story short, it's an "improvement" although you and I probably can't use ELF support as a good reason why we should choose Linux over XBSD. It seems to make programmers (in general) happy, and it looks like the old format is being phased out. -Khan -- "I have a dream that... little children... will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." -Martin Luther King Jr.