🚀 go-pugleaf

Com files were first in the world of dos. They are becoming a thing of the past.
Com files load faster than Exe files since there is no relocation for the loader
to take care of. They are an exact memory image on disk. Com files must have
code in them to release the rest of conventional memory or you won't be able
to spawn any more programs since dos granted all of conventional ram to them.
Exe files can be compiled to do this on loading. Dos looks for com files before 
exe files (or it did thru dos 6.2 ). If you had two files named the same name but
one had a com extension and the other an exe, and you typed the filename at 
the prompt, the com file would run not the exe. Some people erroneously thought
that if you typed the extension the exe file would run. It won't.  However if I 
remember right you can rename an exe file to have the com extension and will run,
and it will load correctly too since the loader simply reads in the relo from the header
without remembering it was just passed a com file, and will load it just like an exe file.
Com files are still used in real/virtual86 tsr programming. Com files or "tiny models" are
sometimes referred to as kinda like Flat Models. But kinda is about it. Flat model progs
have code and data seg (even though they both start at zero ), Flat win32 models have relo
provisions for static data and dynamic linked code in even though it's much different than 
the dos or win16 loading. So a little bit of Tiny + little bit of Small + some different relo 
technics = Flat.
end.