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Hunk format

Infra & Ops På svenska → Updated: 2026-08-15

The Amiga's format for programs and object files — a chain of "hunks" the loader relocated in memory at launch.

Amiga Hunk is the format AmigaOS used for both finished programs and object files from the compiler. A file is a sequence of hunks — code, data, zeroed bss, relocation tables and symbols. Because the 68000 Amiga had no memory management or virtual memory, a program could land anywhere in RAM, so the loader (LoadSeg) read the hunks, allocated memory and patched every address on load.

Linkers such as BLink and ALink merged object hunks into a runnable file. The format lived from 1985 through the whole 68k era; only when the Amiga moved to PowerPC was it replaced by the platform-neutral ELF. It belonged to the same file culture as IFF, though the hunk format is entirely its own thing.

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