What is the difference between ELF files and bin files?

Question

The final images produced by compliers contain both bin file and extended loader format ELf file ,what is the difference between the two , especially the utility of ELF file

Answer 1

some resources:

1. ELF for the ARM architecture
   http://infocenter.arm.com/help/topic/com.arm.doc.ihi0044d/IHI0044D_aaelf.pdf
2. ELF from wiki
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executable_and_Linkable_Format

ELF format is generally the default output of compiling. if you use GNU tool chains, you can translate it to binary format by using objcopy, such as:

  arm-elf-objcopy -O binary [elf-input-file] [binary-output-file]

or using fromELF utility(built in most IDEs such as ADS though):

 fromelf -bin -o [binary-output-file] [elf-input-file]