Re: COM File

[Steve deRosier]

Kris,

First off, this is not a question for the Make list.  The subject matter 
of the list is for GNU Make, and this couldn't be any further off the 
subject.

But, that said:
What it comes down to is, "why would you want to?".  A .com file is an 
antiquated concept from the early days of MS DOS.  .com stands for 
"command".  Basically the .com files were used to handle basic commands 
and OS utilities.  .com files had a special startup that was shorter and 
more direct than .exe programs.  But, the file format and resources and 
a few other things were much more strict.  In contrast, .exe's had fewer 
restrictions, but had a longer startup.  Both formats were compiled or 
assembled from human-readable code to the final machine lanugage 
executable.  .com's are pretty rare and I don't think they even run 
under modern Windows implmentations other than through a 16bit emulation 
layer that is still there in some version to handle legacy code.

On Linux, there is no difference.  A compiled or assembled program in 
machine code format (typically an elf format for almost all linuxes) is 
all the same (at least from this viewpoint).  If you've got some code 
for linux, you compile it with gcc or g++ (or gas for asm code).  Then 
you run it.  Pretty simple.  Of course there are other executable types 
of files on Linux: shell scripts (similar to .bat or "batch" files on MS 
DOS), and interpreted language scripts (Perl).

I don't know why you need to have anything to do with .com executables 
at all, but if you REALLY must deal with them, I urge you to do some 
significant reserach both on the web and in some older (80's vintage) MS 
DOS programming books.  Understand the beast you are dealing with and 
then reexamine the problem.

If you need to follow up on this reply, let's take it off the list.

- Steve


S kris wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I understand that .COM file could be generated from the OBJ files using 
> MASM linker under windows. Is there anyway that .COM file could be 
> generated from the OBJ files under Linux? (Using GNU toolchain)
>
> IF not, What is the equivalent file for .COM file in Linux? How to 
> generate this?
>
> Please clarify my above queries.
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
> --Kris
>
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