What is the difference between plain binary format (.bin) and Windows Executable (.exe)?
What is the difference between plain binary format (.bin) and Windows Executable (.exe)?
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What is the difference between plain binary format (.bin) and Windows Executable (.exe)?
I’m not sure what a “bin” file is in this case. Could be a firmware, could be an object file, could be anything really (it depends on context).
When talking about executables (exe files in the case of windows) these are usually self contained packages with everything required to run them packed in. These file formats usually contain all the executable data, string and other resources, linking data and exports, offsets, and other data stuffed in them. They have everything required for the OS to setup and enviroment to run them, like the dependent libraries that need to be loaded, the architecture it needs to run, etc.
There are lots of different ones in common use:
Lots of others (COFF, COM, etc).
If the operating system supports dynamically linkable libraries (dlls on windows, .so files on linux, dylibs on mac) then they usually share this same packaging format.