Date: Tue, 20 Oct 1998 11:56:21 -0400 (EDT)
Message-Id: <199810201556.LAA08607@indy.delorie.com>
From: DJ Delorie <dj AT delorie DOT com>
To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
In-reply-to: <19981020114706.11792.00003389@ng73.aol.com> (uhfgood@aol.com)
Subject: Re: -KWII-  Not a problem, but confusing, please help?
Reply-To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com


> gcc fnlcall.c -s -o fnlcall.o
> 
> What this generates (i'm sure all of you know) is fnlcall.o and fnlcall.exe

No, it only generates fnlcall.o, but that's the exe!  I think what you want
to do is this:

	gcc -c fnlcall.c
		generates fnlcall.o, which is an object
	gcc fnlcall.o -o fnlcall.exe
		generates gnlcall.exe, which is an exe

if you do "gcc -o foo" it makes both foo, the unstubbed COFF file, and
foo.exe, the stubbed COFF file.  If you do "gcc -o foo.exe" it just
makes the one stubbed COFF file.  The "-o" option does not tell gcc
what to build, it just tells it what the file name is.  The -c option
tells gcc to produce an object instead of an executable.

> Now.  It was interesting to see that fnlcall.o was nearly the same size as
> fnlcall.exe but to me it looked like the fnlcall.o was too big to be an object 
> file.

Correct.  Even though the name was fnlcall.o, you told gcc to produce
an executable and call it fnlcall.o.  fnlcall.o is an executable
(unstubbed, though).

> I looked up in the docs the -c which tells it not to link...  and
> produces a *real* object file which is actually much smaller than
> the executable.

Correct.  You then link that object (possibly with others) into an
executable.  See http://www.delorie.com/djgpp/doc/ug/larger/multisrc.html

> Well what's actually puzzling me is what did i create

You created the COFF version of the final executable.  DJGPP makes an
.EXE by prepending a 2k stub to this which lets MS-DOS load the
program.  Look up "stub" in http://www.delorie.com/djgpp/doc/lexicon/