Windows PE files have, in addition to the section table, also the "Data directories" which are a whole bunch of pointers into some of the sections. Some of thes

Windows PE files have, in addition to the section table, also the "Data directories" which are a whole bunch of pointers into some of the sections. Some of these serve the same purposes as some ELF sections. So it's a bit unfair not to include them in the count when comparing the systems. And of course many of those 42 ELF sections are for debug info. On Windows debug information is usually stored in a separate file (.pdb), which also makes the comparison unfair. I have to admit though that Windows' handling of debug symbols is much more useful (especially when you have a symbol server).