A Hexdump of a binary executable file

An executable or executable file, in computer science, is a file whose contents are meant to be treated as a program by a computer. Hex dump is a Hexadecimal view (on screen or a printout of Computer memory. Computer science (or computing science) is the study and the Science of the theoretical foundations of Information and Computation and their A computer file is a block of Arbitrary Information, or resource for storing information which is available to a Computer program and is usually Computer programs (also software programs, or just programs) are instructions for a Computer. A computer is a Machine that manipulates data according to a list of instructions.

While a file in source form may be executable, such a file is usually referred to as a "script. " Most executable files contain the binary representation of machine instructions of a specific processor (in which case the executable may also be referred to as a binary), or they may be binary pseudocode for a virtual machine. The binary numeral system, or base-2 number system, is a Numeral system that represents numeric values using two symbols usually 0 and 1. Machine code or machine language is a system of instructions and data executed directly by a Computer 's Central processing unit. In Computer science, a virtual machine (VM is a Software implementation of a machine (computer that executes programs like a real machine A non-source executable file is also called an object program. Some operating systems designate executable files by specific naming convention (such as the name ending in a filename extension ". An operating system (commonly abbreviated OS and O/S) is the software component of a Computer system that is responsible for the management and coordination A filename extension is a suffix to the name of a Computer file applied to indicate the encoding convention ( File format) of its contents bin" or ". exe") or noted alongside the file in its metadata (such as the "execute" permission bits under Unix-like operating systems). Metadata ( meta data, or sometimes metainformation) is "data about data" of any sort in any media Most modern File systems have methods of administering permissions or access rights to specific users and groups of users A bit is a binary digit, taking a value of either 0 or 1 Binary digits are a basic unit of Information storage and communication A Unix-like (sometimes shortened to *nix) Operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system while not necessarily conforming An operating system (commonly abbreviated OS and O/S) is the software component of a Computer system that is responsible for the management and coordination However, unless a file contains properly-formatted computer instructions, it will not actually execute properly even if it is so marked.

An executable file can contain much information that is not part of the program itself, such as information on the environment required to run the program, debugging and symbolic information, or other housekeeping information used by the operating system to prepare the program to be run. Such information is frequently not part of executables for embedded systems or systems where storage is small. Debugging information is not generally provided with executables for commercial software packages.

System calls

Executables contain calls to operating system services in addition to regular machine instructions. In Computing, a system call is the mechanism used by an application program to request service from the Kernel. This means that executables are usually operating system-specific in addition to being processor-specific.

Formats

COM (. com) (DOS)
PE (. The Portable Executable (PE format is a File format for Executables object code, and DLLs used in 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows exe, . dll, . ocx, . sys, . scr) (Windows)
ELF (Unix and Unix-like)
Mach-O (Mac)
Hunk (AmigaOS)
For a list of more executable formats, see the lists at object file. In Computing, the Executable and Linking Format ( ELF, formerly called Extensible Linking Format) is a common standard File format for Executables Mach-O, short for Mach object file format is a File format for Executables Object code, Shared libraries, dynamically-loaded Hunk is the Executable File format of tools and programs of the Amiga "Classic" Operating System (up to AmigaOS 3 A file format is a particular way to encode information for storage in a Computer file. In Computer science, object code, or an object file, is the representation of code that a Compiler or Assembler generates by processing

Scripts

Main article: Scripting languages

Not all applications exist in a form readable only by machines. "Scripting" redirects here For other uses see Script. Related, but generally mutually incompatible, are Scripting languages. "Scripting" redirects here For other uses see Script. Unlike binaries, these applications do not go through a compilation step before being delivered to an end user. They are generally human-readable. In a sense, a script exists as both the source code and the "binary" at the same time.