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I'm pretty sure it started out as a file name, it being the default output name of the C compiler in Unix. It didn't become the name of a format until Linux, a

I'm pretty sure it started out as a file name, it being the default output name of the C compiler in Unix. It didn't become the name of a format until Linux, and I think it really didn't get that name until ELF was introduced in Linux since they needed a way to distinguish the two formats.

nineteen999 4y ago
From Wikipedia (and I've always understood this to be true): > This is an abbreviated form of "assembler output", the filename of the output of Ken Thompson's PDP-7 assembler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A.out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A.out