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Any object code produced by compilers is usually linked with other pieces of object code (produced by the same or another compiler) by a type of program called a linker. The linker needs a great deal of information on each program entity. For example, to correctly link a function it needs its name, the number of arguments and their types, and ...
An ABI defines how data structures or computational routines are accessed in machine code, which is a low-level, hardware-dependent format. In contrast, an application programming interface (API) defines this access in source code , which is a relatively high-level, hardware-independent, often human-readable format.
Calling conventions, type representations, and name mangling are all part of what is known as an application binary interface (ABI). There are subtle differences in how various compilers implement these conventions, so it is often difficult to interface code which is compiled by different compilers.
For a compiled program running directly on a CPU under an OS, a "binary compatible operating system" primarily means application binary interface (ABI) compatibility with another system. However, it also often implies that APIs that the application depends on, directly or indirectly (such as the Windows API , for example), are sufficiently similar.
Some older and today uncommon formats include BOO, BTOA, and USR encoding. Most of these encodings generate text containing only a subset of all ASCII printable characters: for example, the base64 encoding generates text that only contains upper case and lower case letters, (A–Z, a–z), numerals (0–9), and the "+", "/", and "=" symbols.
In the table below, the column "ISO 8859-1" shows how the file signature appears when interpreted as text in the common ISO 8859-1 encoding, with unprintable characters represented as the control code abbreviation or symbol, or codepage 1252 character where available, or a box otherwise. In some cases the space character is shown as ␠.
In addition, the signature "L fully-qualified-class ;" would mean the class uniquely specified by that name; e.g., the signature "Ljava/lang/String;" refers to the class java.lang.String. Also, prefixing [to the signature makes the array of that type; for example, [I means the int array type. Finally, a void signature uses the V code.
Many code signing systems will store the public key inside the signature. Some software frameworks and OSs that check the code's signature before executing will allow you to choose to trust that developer from that point on after the first run. An application developer can provide a similar system by including the public keys with the installer.