Chapter 4. Overview of File Format

The first half of Partition II of the standard, consisting of sections 1 20 (Chapter 3 in this book), described the semantics of metadata what it means using the ilasm assembly language as an illustrative mechanism. Chapter 5 contains the second half of Partition II, sections 21 24, which describes the logical format of metadata and the file format.

This chapter is an overview of the second half of Partition II, describing how to find the information that is pertinent to you. It also provides some information on the PE (Portable Executable) file format for managed files and its relation to the layout of metadata.

The appendix of this book reprints the Microsoft Portable Executable and Object File Format Specification.