What Is An ELF ?

Question

I Was Checking Some Blogs About "Un Understandable By Human Language In Machines" Like Written Binaries Or Cash But I Was Reading The Blog And I Found Something About ELFs I Was Wondering What Is An ELF ? Later I Was Messing With Some PyDroid 3 Files :p And I Accsiedentally Opened The Busybox File As TXT File 😁 And I Found That Name In First Line ↓
ELF(
❔❔❔❔❔❔❔❔❔❔❔❔❔❔❔❔❔❔❔❔❔Blah Blah Some Un Understandable Language 😑

So My Question Here What Is An ELF And Why Does It Exist In Files Like Busybox Files

Answer 1

A format of executables in Unix world

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executable_and_Linkable_Format

kind of the same as PE in Windows world

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Executable

Answer 2

@Marvin Do You Mean File Format ? Because The BusyBox File Is A File Without An Extension

Answer 3

Extension and format are different things. Extensions are used primeraly in Windows (other systems rely less on them) to identify the file format. But the fact that you change an extension of a file, doesn't change the underlying format of the file. And yeah, ELF/PE may refer not only to the file on a disk, but to a image loaded in memory. Also, on Unix systems, executables usually have no extensions. And both ELF and PE refer to executables and linkables (libraries). On Windows that would be .exe and .dll.