What does “bytes to encode the instructions” mean?

Question

I am reading "Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective". Topic: stages of compilation in C Preprocessing phase, Compilation phase, Assembly phase and Linker phase. In Assembly phase this line "This file (the object file) is a binary file containing 17 bytes to encode the instructions for function main." I can't understand what the "17 bytes to encode the instructions mean".

Answer 1

Without entering in much detail, the result of the compilation is stored in object files. Then, after compiling that function main , the result are 17 bytes that are stored in the object file. It says 'encode' because the compiler is "translating" from C++ language to another, which normally is machine code. Depending on the compiler and the target machine/environment you want to compile for, those 17 bytes will probably be different.