A brief detail on Object code

Programmers engaged in software application development writes millions of lines of code for a program that would run on a single computer or a big network. Whether it is a driver written in C or C++ or a database-driven application program written in Visual Basic, the code is first written and then compiled to get the actual program. The code in the raw form (written by the programmer) is known as the source code and the compiled version is called the Object Code.

The objects in Object Code form a sequence of instructions for a computer in a machine code format and can be executed by the Central Processing Unit of a computer. The compiler produces the Object Code which further consists of a set of compact code called binaries by processing the source code file.  For embedded systems, object codes contain machine code only; however, object code may also contain data such as relocation information, program symbols, stack unwinding information, debugging information etc. which is required in a program written by any programmer working in software development services in India or elsewhere.

An outsource software development company may design a program whose object code must conform to a certain object file format for storing the object code itself and the related data. The design and choice of the object file format are of paramount importance in developing a robust program.  Objects file formats are generally structured as blocks of data where each block contains a certain type of data.

Some of the popular object file formats are:

• DOS - .COM, DOS Executable, OBJ file or Relocatable Object Module Format
• Unix - a.out, COFF (System V)
• Microsoft Windows - 16-bit New Executable, Portable Executable (PE)

Any offshore software development company engaged in developing programs in the open source environment can modify the source code of a program and generate a new set of object code and thereby write new programs.

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I am the webmaster at www.synapse.co.in - a outsource software development company in India offering numerous services, such as flash web development, flash scripting, customized applications for the iPhone,and website maintenance services.