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Re: When the output file is the same as the input file ...
- From: Cary Coutant <ccoutant at gmail dot com>
- To: Nick Clifton <nickc at redhat dot com>
- Cc: John Darrington <john at darrington dot wattle dot id dot au>, Binutils <binutils at sourceware dot org>
- Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2018 08:58:43 -0700
- Subject: Re: When the output file is the same as the input file ...
- References: <20180405081326.GA1285@jocasta.intra> <3177548b-db9b-38f6-8089-e9b5d43e43f5@redhat.com>
> I have also often wonder why the default output name is a.out, which does
> not make a lot of sense to me.
Well, the "a" in "a.out" stands for "assembler". This dates back to
olden days when one might write a whole program in assembly language,
and the assembler would produce an absolute, fully-bound, executable
image. The first Unix linker adopted the same default output name
because of that.
-cary