From: "John M. Aldrich" <fighteer AT cs DOT com>
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.djgpp
Subject: Re: What is in executableS?
Date: Sat, 30 May 1998 15:48:51 -0400
Organization: Two pounds of chaos and a pinch of salt.
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Michal Rudolf wrote:
> 
> I wonder what such texts as:
> 
> EXE|COM|BAT|BTM|DLL|VXD||A|A01|A02|A03|A04|A05|ADL|ARC|ARJ|ASC|ASM|AUX|AWK|BAS|BIB
> BGI|BMP|C|CC|CFG|CGZ|CH3|CHR|CI|CLP|CMF|CPI|CPP|CXX|DAT|DBF|DIZ|DOC|DVI|E|EL|ELC|F77
> [cut]
> 
> are doing in DJGPP-generated executables? It seems that there are
> kilobytes of uninitialized data in every *.exe created by DJGPP.
> Perhaps anybody could tell me what they are needed for? Not that this
> worries me - I am just curious.

It's all part of the startup and library code.  The text above is, I
believe, used by a portion of the library code that recognizes known
types of files for certain operations, such as determining if a file is
"executable".  For DOS, the extensions EXE and COM are valid. 
Command.com uses BAT.  DLL and VXD are Windows filetypes.  ELC is an
executable ELisp program, etc.

The startup and library code provide huge amounts of functionality to
your programs.  It's certainly possible to get rid of some of it if you
don't need it; see chapter 8.15 of the FAQ for a more complete
description.  But most of the code is meant to be healthy and useful,
and without it some of DJGPP's nicer features would not be available.

-- 
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|      John M. Aldrich       | "Sin lies only in hurting other      |
|       aka Fighteer I       | people unnecessarily.  All other     |
|   mailto:fighteer AT cs DOT com   | 'sins' are invented nonsense."       |
| http://www.cs.com/fighteer |                 - Lazarus Long       |
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