Certain items are ordered by occurrence , and referenced by index ( starting index is 1 ) . Index fields can contain 0 , indicating not - present , or values from 1 through 7FFF . The index is encoded as 1 or 2 bytes and a 16 - bit value is obtained as follows : if ( first _ byte 0x80 ) index _ word = ( first _ byte 7F ) * 0x100 + second _ byte ; else index _ word = first _ byte
Type indices
The type index is treated as an index field when a record is parsed ( occupies one or two bytes , occurs in PUBDEF , COMDEF , EXTDEF records ) . They are encoded as described under indexed references .
NOTE : At present , no type checking is done by the linker . If any link - time semantics are defined , that information will be recorded somewhere within this document .
Ordered Collections
Certain records and record groups are ordered ; the ordering is obtained from the order of the record types within the file together with the ordering of repeated fields within these records . Such ordered collections are referenced by index , counting from 1 ( index 0 indicates unknown or decline - to - state ) .
The ordered collections are :
o