The
Portable Executable (PE) format is a
file format for
executables,
object code,
DLLs, FON Font files, and others used in 32-bit and 64-bit versions of
Windows operating systems. The PE format is a data structure that encapsulates the information necessary for the Windows OS loader to manage the wrapped executable code. This includes dynamic library references for linking,
API export and import tables, resource management data and
thread-local storage (TLS) data. On
NT operating systems, the PE format is used for
EXE,
DLL,
SYS (
device driver), and other file types. The
Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) specification states that PE is the standard executable format in EFI environments.