On Wed, Dec 9, 2015 at 9:56 AM, Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:

> check the man page on the a.out format.


​Note to folks on the list - please don't give away the answer...

Will

A small piece of homework for the student -- look at 407 the magic number
for the a.out file ​and see if you can explain why Ken picked that value.
Hint it is particular to the PDP-11 architecture and is not portable to
other systems, although most other systems that UNIX was "ported" too
continued to used the a.out format kept the magic numbers as 407/411 etc.,
although I know of some ports (like mine own for Magix - the Tek Magnolia
system of the late 1970s) that changed the magic number to be correct for
that architecture.

Clem
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