An object file is a file containing relocatable format machine code that is usually not directly executable. Object files are produced by an assembler, compiler, or other language translator, and used as input to the linker.
Additionally, object files may contain metadata such as information to resolve symbolic cross-references between different modules, relocation information, stack unwinding information, comments, program symbols, debugging or profiling information. A linker is typically used to generate an executable or library by combining parts of object files.
Read more about Object File: Object File Formats
Famous quotes containing the words object and/or file:
“The hero is a feeling, a man seen
As if the eye was an emotion,
As if in seeing we saw our feeling
In the object seen and saved that mystic
Against the sight, the penetrating,
Pure eye.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“I have been a soreheaded occupant of a file drawer labeled “Science Fiction” ... and I would like out, particularly since so many serious critics regularly mistake the drawer for a urinal.”
—Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (b. 1922)