Rating:  Summary: Very Good Overall, but omission of LX object format glaring Review: The description of linking, loading, and various object formats is very informative. The style of writing is such that I was able to read it at one sitting (quite an accomplishment for a technical book :) ). But the book is seriously incomplete without a discussions of IBM's LX 32-bit executable, object, and DLL formats, and the differences between LX and PE, especially as it pertains to dynamic linking. Also, if you're going to discuss OMF objects, it seems impossible to me to skip NE executables, objects, and DLL formats--the jump from DOS 2.0 (OMF) to Windows NT (PE) is simply too great without a parallel discussion of NE. Finally, more coverage of incremental linking would be good. But, if you confine yourself to a.out, COFF, PE, or pre-NE OMF, this book's contents will interest you.
Rating:  Summary: Very Good Overall, but omission of LX object format glaring Review: The description of linking, loading, and various object formats is very informative. The style of writing is such that I was able to read it at one sitting (quite an accomplishment for a technical book :) ). But the book is seriously incomplete without a discussions of IBM's LX 32-bit executable, object, and DLL formats, and the differences between LX and PE, especially as it pertains to dynamic linking. Also, if you're going to discuss OMF objects, it seems impossible to me to skip NE executables, objects, and DLL formats--the jump from DOS 2.0 (OMF) to Windows NT (PE) is simply too great without a parallel discussion of NE. Finally, more coverage of incremental linking would be good. But, if you confine yourself to a.out, COFF, PE, or pre-NE OMF, this book's contents will interest you.
Rating:  Summary: This book was interesting for me Review: This book was quite interesting for me. Of course, it is not a comprehensive manual, but it is very helpful in understanding of some quite basic OS features. It provides good overview of some existing file formats and even programming exercises (It will be interesting to see a person who ever did them :). So I recommend this book to people who wants to learn some information about this field.
Rating:  Summary: Who knew linkers could be interesting? Review: This book will definitely surprise you if, like me, you had the idea that linkers were just simple, dull tools that ran in the background. The author provides a surprisingly thorough, but understandable, overview of all sorts of linker/loader issues: layout in memory, relocatable code, debugging information, etc., but he does it with such a light, readable style that the material itself doesn't seem particularly difficult. My one complaint is that the book has very little code. The perl-based linker project is basically just a short series of "suggested exercises" without much direction. Still, I wouldn't hesistate to recommend this to anyone interested in compilers or operating systems.
Rating:  Summary: Excellent Review: This is one of the excellent book, that gives enormous information to know how object files are created and how linker in various OS works.
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