.o is the filename extension conventionally used on "object" files --- which are the intermediate results from compilation of .c and .h C programming language (and possibly .S assembly language) source files.

The C compiler on most UNIX systems is conventionally named cc and on Linux, this is almost always a copy of gcc the GNU compiler collection (http://www.gnu.org/software/gcc/ ).

These object files are then linked using the ld command to create executable binaries (in a.out or ELF (executable linking format) files). They can also be linked into .so (shared object, like .DLL) files or combined into .a (library archive) using the ar command.

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• () JimDennis - 23 Sep 2003
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Revision Comment

• 24 Sep 2003 — typos, minor reformatting
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