The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Sep. 21, 1993
Filed:
Feb. 20, 1990
Arun Kumar, Ashland, MA (US);
Prime Computer, Inc., Natick, MA (US);
Abstract
A method and apparatus for linking and registering executable program formats (EPFs) so as to resolve all unresolved pointers. The invention sequentially attempts to link and initialize each EPF by resolving the unresolved pointers of each EPF. During each attempt to initialize an EPF, the EPF is assigned two states, a linkage state and an invocation state. If an EPF has all pointers to shared address space resolved, it is marked as INITIALIZED. Otherwise, it is marked as UNINITIALIZED. Further, an EPF is marked as SUSPENDED if it contains either unresolved pointers or pointers that reference another EPF that is marked as SUSPENDED. Otherwise, the EPF is marked as READY and is ready to execute. Data defining the unresolved pointers of each EPF that is not SUSPENDED is stored in a database. After each EPF is registered, the database is checked to determine if all the unresolved pointers in the shared linkage of a suspended EPF can now be resolved. If so, those EPFs are reinitialized, marked as INITIALIZED and READY and the data pertaining to them is removed from the database. In this manner, the EPFs can be registered and initialized in any order.