"Module" page

The "Module" pages appear in the properties notebooks of all executable files to display additional information about an executable module.

A "module" is the &os2; kernel's representation about an executable file that was successfully loaded. This can either be a program file or a DLL.

The information on this page is retrieved directly from the executable file and cannot be changed. All executables on operating systems which maintain some compatibility with DOS (such as &os2; and Windows) still use the same EXE header as DOS 3.x. However, for the "extended" EXE formats used by &os2; and Windows, after the old DOS header, additional executable headers appear in the file. &xwp; attempts to analyze the various headers in the file and shows the results on this page.

In the "Module format" group, the "Executable format" will be one of the following:

"DOS 3.x": The file only has the old DOS EXE header, so it is probably a DOS file.
"Linear Executable (LX)": This is the native OS/2 executable format that is used by 32-bit modules, including 32-bit libraries. Most EXE and DLL files that were designed to run on OS/2 version 2.x or higher (including eComStation) will have this format.
"New Executable (NE)": This format was introduced by IBM and Microsoft with OS/2 1.x and is still used for 16-bit executables under both Windows and OS/2. Most Windows 3.x applications will have this format, as well as 16-bit OS/2 applications (including 16-bit libraries). Most &os2; device drivers will have this format as well.
"Portable Executable (PE)": This format was introduced by Microsoft for 32-bit Windows applications and is extensively used under all Windows versions since Windows 95 (including derivatives of Windows NT). Also, some Win32s applications (i.e. 32-bit applications running under Windows 3.x) will have this format. OS/2 neither uses nor understands this format by default, but if you have Odin installed, OS/2 can load such executables.

The "Target OS" shows you the operating system for which this executable was written. This will show one of "DOS 3.x", "DOS 4.x", "OS/2", "Win16", "Win386", or "Win32". For some executable formats, &xwp; will display the target OS as specified in the executable itself, for others it will do a best guess.

The "Module description" group shows you additional information about the executable as specified by the executable's vendor. This can be retrieved for LX and NE formats. This information will be the same as returned by the BLDLEVEL.EXE command-line utility, which is shipped with &os2;.

Many &os2; executables use the special IBM "bldlevel" format to specify the vendor, version, and description all in one string. If this format is obeyed, &xwp; will display this information, otherwise only the "Description" field will be set.