Subj : Re: Binary Format Descriptor
To   : comp.programming
From : Bill Cunningham
Date : Fri Aug 19 2005 04:00 pm


> First, a group like news:comp.os.ms-windows.programmer.win32 is a much
> better place to ask about Win32 PE files.

    Thanks

  Microsoft calls the format
> COFF, but it's their own customized version of COFF.  And there might
> well be a lot of information available on Microsoft's MSDN site.
>
> As for DOS, true MS-DOS that is, there were two binary executable
> formats, .com files (pure binary) and .exe, which was a version of
> OMF86.  On the other hand, if by "DOS" you mean a Win32 console
> application, that is Microsoft's version of COFF as well.  There is
> just a flag set by the linker to tell the OS to run it in the console
> subsystem.
>
> And yes, Linux uses a version of ELF.
>
    I guess what I want to do is load an executable or dll or vxd in the
case of my os and look at the signature and see if it's PE or NE .

Bill

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