### 2.12 Targets

Description
Each port of BFD to a different machine requires the creation of a target back end. All the back end provides to the root part of BFD is a structure containing pointers to functions which perform certain low level operations on files. BFD translates the applications's requests through a pointer into calls to the back end routines.

When a file is opened with `bfd_openr`, its format and target are unknown. BFD uses various mechanisms to determine how to interpret the file. The operations performed are:

- Create a BFD by calling the internal routine `_bfd_new_bfd`, then call `bfd_find_target` with the target string supplied to `bfd_openr` and the new BFD pointer.
- If a null target string was provided to `bfd_find_target`, look up the environment variable `GNUTARGET` and use that as the target string.
- If the target string is still `NULL`, or the target string is `default`, then use the first item in the target vector as the target type, and set `target_defaulted` in the BFD to cause `bfd_check_format` to loop through all the targets. See bfd_target. See Formats.
- Otherwise, inspect the elements in the target vector one by one, until a match on target name is found. When found, use it.
- Otherwise return the error `bfd_error_invalid_target` to `bfd_openr`.
- `bfd_openr` attempts to open the file using `bfd_open_file`, and returns the BFD.

Once the BFD has been opened and the target selected, the file format may be determined. This is done by calling `bfd_check_format` on the BFD with a suggested format. If `target_defaulted` has been set, each possible target type is tried to see if it recognizes the specified format. `bfd_check_format` returns `TRUE` when the caller guesses right.