Application binary interface: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 15:50, 4 February 2020

Revision as of 03:53, 22 February 2020

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An ''ABI'' defines how data structures or computational routines are accessed in [[machine code]], which is a low-level, hardware-dependent format; in contrast, an [[Application programming interface|''API'']] defines this access in [[source code]], which is a relatively high-level, hardware-independent, often [[human-readable]] format. A common aspect of an ABI is the [[calling convention]], which determines how data is provided as input to or read as output from computational routines; examples are the [[x86 calling conventions]].

Adhering to an ABI (which may or may not be officially standardized) is usually the job of a [[compiler]], operating system, or library author; however, an application programmer may have to deal with an ABI directly when writing a program in a mix of programming languages (or even different compilers for the same language), which can be achieved by using [[foreign function call]]s.

== Description ==