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Asked: 2026-05-13T13:16:07+00:00

I’m currently learning C++ and there are some (basic) things which I don’t really

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I’m currently learning C++ and there are some (basic) things which I don’t really know about and where I didn’t find anything useful over different search engines.

  • Well as all operating systems have different “binary formats” for their executeables (Windows/Linux/Mac) – what are the differences? I mean all of them are binary but is there anything (beside all the OS APIs) that really differs?

  • (Windows) This is a dumb question – but are all the applications there really just binary (and I mean just 0’s and 1’s)? In which format are they stored? (As you don’t see 0’s and 1’s in all the Text editors but mainly non-displayable characters)

Best regards,
lamas

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  1. Editorial Team

    Executable file formats for Windows (PE), Linux (ELF), OS/X etc (MACH-O), tend to be designed to solve common problems, so they all share common features. However, each platform specifies a different standard, so the files are not compatible across platforms, even if the platforms use the same type of CPU.

    Executable file formats are not only used for executable files, but also libraries, which also contain code but are never run directly by the user – only loaded into memory to satisfy the needs to directly executable binaries.

    Common Features of an executable file format:

    • One or more blocks of executable code
    • One or more blocks of read-only data such as text and numbers
    • One or more blocks of read/write data
    • Instructions on where to place these blocks in memory when the application is run
    • Instructions on what libraries (which are also in an ‘executable file format’) need to be loaded as well, and how they connect (link) up to this executable file.
    • One or more tables mapping code and data locations to strings or ids that describe them, useful for linking and debugging.

    It’s interesting to compare such formats to more basic formats, such as the venerable DOS .com file, which simply describes 64K of assorted ‘stuff’ to be loaded at the next available location, and has few of the features listed above.

    Binary in this sense is used to compare them to ‘source’ files, which are written in text format. Binary format simply says that they are encoded in a non-text way, and doesn’t really relate to the 0-and-1 sense of binary.

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