When the output file is the same as the input file ...

[Nick Clifton]

Hi Cary,

>> 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.

Ah!  So that's why it uses that name!  Thanks very much for the explanation.

Cheers
  Nick