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nraynaud | karma 3750 | avg karma 1.83 · 2022-10-11 05:00:58

I was a bit dumbfounded by the article because I forgot that a.out is a format before being a filename.

lokedhs | karma 2892 | avg karma 2.22 · 2022-10-11 05:48:59

I'm pretty sure it started out as a file name, it being the default output name of the C compiler in Unix.

It didn't become the name of a format until Linux, and I think it really didn't get that name until ELF was introduced in Linux since they needed a way to distinguish the two formats.

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nineteen999 | karma 1725 | avg karma 1.73 · 2022-10-11 10:54:28

From Wikipedia (and I've always understood this to be true):

> This is an abbreviated form of "assembler output", the filename of the output of Ken Thompson's PDP-7 assembler

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A.out

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