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ELF archiver string table

Ian Lance Taylor iant@google.com
Sun Jun 24 00:35:00 GMT 2007 
Nick Clifton <nickc@redhat.com> writes:

> If you are talking about a tool like the POSIX "ar" command then it
> may interest you to know that the POSIX spec is fairly flexible.  This
> is from the POSIX.1-2001 specification for the ar command:
> 
>    "The archive format is not described. It is recognized that
>     there are several known ar formats, which are not compatible.
>     The ar utility is included, however, to allow creation of
>     archives that are intended for use only on one machine. The
>     archive is specified as a file, and it can be moved as a file.
>     This does allow an archive to be moved from one machine to
>     another machine that uses the same implementation of ar."

But note that although POSIX does not specify the archive format, the
ELF ABI does specify it.  See chapter 7 in the System V Application
Binary Interface here: http://www.sco.com/developers/devspecs/.

Ian
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