Question of a.out

[keerthiprasadm]

Hi All,

I recently started working on Linux system. Sometime get some crazy doubts, tried to google it. But sometime I get answer sometime I don’t. So though of joining here; so that can get more updates and to ask some question to experts .

My first question, say suppose I wrote a program (which has a global variable) and I compiled it. I will get a.out file. I want to know who is giving input as to place this global variable at this X location and to place text at this location.

Thanks,
Keerthi.

[Cabhan]

The last step of compiling a program is to run the linker, which handles referencing all symbols and figuring out addresses. I don't know exactly how it all works (and it's probably too complicated to describe here in any case), but the linker that GCC uses is called "ld".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linker_(computing)