What file does exe refer to?

EXE refers to an executable program file, a file of instructions and data used to perform a series of tasks on a computer; EXE files can be loaded into memory and loaded and executed by the operating system. The operating system must interpret the contents of the executable file into meaningful machine code instructions for use by the physical central processing unit (CPU).

The operating environment of this tutorial: Windows 7 system, Dell G3 computer.

The full name of exe is "executable", which means "executable" in Chinese and is a file format.

EXE refers to an executable program file, a file of instructions and data used to perform a series of tasks on a computer. The operating system must interpret the contents of the executable file into meaningful machine code instructions for use by the physical central processing unit (CPU).

EXE files can be loaded into memory, loaded and executed by the operating system. Executable programs between different platforms corresponding to a specific CPU instruction set (such as the X86 instruction set) cannot be directly transplanted and run.

#An executable file can also be a file composed of commands executed by a software compiler. Even VB or Java Script or any other scripting language source files can be considered as executable files.

Some operating systems identify executable files through extensions such as .exe. Alternatively, they could identify it through metadata, which signals that the file has execute permissions, as is done in Unix-based operating systems. Most operating systems start the execution process by verifying that the file is in valid executable form to avoid random bit sequences being accidentally executed as instructions.

Modern operating systems manage computer resources. This means that separate programs make system calls to access privileged resources. Since each brand of operating system has its own system call procedure, executable files are usually operating system specific. There are many methods available to make an executable file executable by multiple operating systems, for example, implementing similar or matching application binary interfaces.

Various executable files do not always adhere to a certain hardware binary interface or instruction set. They can be in bytecode form, for just-in-time compilation, or source code, for scripting languages.

Structure

EXE file is divided into two parts: EXE file header and program body.

The exe file is relatively complex and has a multi-segment structure. It is one of the most successful and complex designs of DOS. Each exe file contains a file header and an image of a relocatable program. The file header contains information used by MS-DOS to load the program, such as the program's size and initial values ​​for registers. The file header also points to a relocation table, which contains a linked list of pointers to the addresses of relocatable segments in the program image.

MS-DOS loads the exe program by copying the image directly from the file to memory, and then adjusts the relocatable segment address specified in the location table. The location table is an array of relocation pointers, each pointing to a relocatable segment address in the program image.

Extended knowledge:

There are two types of binary executable files in the windows operating system: one has the suffix .COM, and the other is .EXE.

Under MS-DOS, when there are .EXE files and .COM files with the same name when running, the .COM file will be executed first. If you only have A.EXE, you can enter "A" directly instead of entering the full name. But if there are A.COM and A.EXE, if you enter A, A.COM will be executed first. To run A.EXE, you can only enter A.EXE but not A.

Executable files in WINDOWS systems are generally .EXE files. In Windows, the user enters the file name without the .exe extension at the command prompt and presses the Enter key or double-clicks to run the executable program.

Linux does not rely on file extensions to determine whether it is executable like MS-DOS/windows, but on file attributes. Each file has a dedicated attribute to indicate whether the file is executable. For programs such as scripts, the first line of the file indicates the location of the program that executes the script.

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