Subj : Re: Binary Format Descriptor
To   : comp.programming
From : robertwessel2@yahoo.com
Date : Fri Aug 19 2005 04:43 pm


Jack Klein wrote:
> 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.


Actually it's .obj files that are/were a variant of OMF.  32 bit .obj
files can be either OMF or COFF (the linker will convert an OMF file,
but COFF is far more common).  I don't know if the MZ .exe format was
derived from anything in particular, it's pretty basic.

.