Part IV
The Binary Format
Everything so far has been written in the text format and turned into bytes by an assembler. A compiler usually skips the text and writes the bytes itself, which is simpler than it sounds: the binary format was designed to be easy to produce and fast to decode. This part goes through it from the first byte to the last, writes a module in hex by hand, builds a small encoder, and covers the optional sections that carry names and debugging information.