XCOFF stands for e
Xtended
Common
Object
File
Format, first used in
AIX on
IBM RS/6000.
Though the default name for an
XCOFF executable is
a.out, it is not by any means the same format.
The problem with
XCOFF is that it is
huge, and quite demanding in the level of detail it wants its
object described in, which is why it has not been used so widely by anyone who had any other choice.
XCOFF can contain a
composite header consisting of a
file header, an
auxiliary header and several
section headers. It can than be followed by some
raw data sections and perhaps some
relocation information as well as some
line numbering information for
debuggers to use. At the end we can have a
symbol table of some sort and a
string table that is associated with it and perhaps the code that the
raw data sections can contain.
The
good thing about
XCOFF is that it provides for including plenty of
programming language-specific
debugging info.
XCOFF supports
32-bit and
64-bit systems.