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I have noticed that a lot of files on my Linux OS have first lines that contain ^?ELF^A^A^A@^ or some variation, at the very least many contain ^?ELF.

What does ELF stand for and what is this type of encoding called?

Adam Ledger
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    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executable_and_Linkable_Format – blvdeer Jun 04 '19 at 03:05
  • great thanks for your patience so is any file that contains such a header to be considered an "ELF file"? – Adam Ledger Jun 04 '19 at 03:12
  • ah ok elfdump nm got it – Adam Ledger Jun 04 '19 at 03:15
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    If you want to know what a file type for a file is, ask your system to tell you. eg. to see what type of file 'blah' is, you can use file blah. file /bin/ls reports "/bin/ls: ELF 64-bit LSB shared object, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked, interpreter /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2, BuildID[sha1]=c6ffa89317550907a309fb98de530a440e3e625a, for GNU/Linux 3.2.0, stripped" on my system (which can contain acronyms yes, but version info too and more precise than guessing) – guiverc Jun 04 '19 at 03:38

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