ELF

The Executable and Linkable Format is a standard file format for executable files, object code, shared libraries, and core dumps.

ELF is flexible by design, extensible, and cross-platform. On the left is a typical layout of an ELF file. Once it is loaded into memory, the program will look like the layout on the right.

elf layout {: style=“width: 300px; flex: 50%;” } program layout {: style=“flex: 50%;” }

Program Sections

NameDescription
textRead-only program instructions and data
dataStatically initialized non-zero data
bssUninitialized or zero data
heapRuntime allocated memory
stackRuntime memory used for local variables and function calls