Common Object File Format

[Rahul Dhesi]

Roy Carlson (mesage identification information stripped as always by our
brain-damaged VAX/VMS mail utility) asked: 

> COFF (Common Object File Format) was documented in Chapter 9 of the
> Transition Aids manual that was published at the time of introduction
> of System V.  Is it described in the current System V documentation?

The System V Release 2 Programmer's Manual dated October 1985 that we received
with System V Release 2.1 for the AT&T 3B2 documents the format of a.out files
under the manual page A.OUT(4).  This file has what the manual calls "a common
object format".  Another sentence says, "The output file of the assembler
as(1), also follows the common object file format of the a.out file...."  The
title of the manual page and the table of contents don't mention "common object
file" but the permuted index does. 

More detailed information about the first 20 bytes of a common object file is
under the manual page FILEHDR(4). 

See also LDFCN(4) for a description of a set of "common object file access
routines" which are "a collection of functions for reading common object files
and archives containing common object files." 

seismo!csnet-relay.ARPA!bsu!dhesi
dhesi%bsu at csnet-relay.ARPA  <Rahul Dhesi>