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Linkers & Loaders, by John Levine, is tightly focused on the domain of program linkage and symbol resolution. It takes you on an argosy commencing at IBM 370 assembly linking and ending up in C++ on modern Pentium and RISC architectures, visiting many of the islands in the archipelago in between, such as UNIX a.out, COFF, ELF, PC DOS OMF, and Window NT PE format.
Levine, moderator of the comp.compilers Internet newsgroup, is a world-class expert in the field and makes his points clearly and concisely, injecting opinion only in summaries of the plusses and minuses of the various object formats, evaluating them much as if they were fine wines. Levine pulls no rabbits from hats; he provides references, including web references for publications that also reside online, with which you can deepen your knowledge of specific formats and platforms.
The computer press has tended in recent years to gassy books that hop around subjects related only by their commercial context (a flaw of many or most of the Java books in print, for example). Linkers & Loaders is classic computer technical writing, focused on minutiae, ship-in-the-bottle all the way. Still, it's not so detail-obsessed that it becomes a shelf reference rather than an pleasant and rapidly absorbed introductory volume.
"Linkers & Loaders" is probably the quickest way to get a fully satisfactory introduction to the subject of compile-time linkage and run-time loading, especially the modern UNIX formats. What Levine doesn't cover you'll be prepared to deduce from the header files after you have read this well-written, well-edited, well-indexed, and well-designed book.
-- Jack J. Woehr
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