gcc march option

[Bansidhar Arvind Deshpande - CTD, Chennai.]

Hi ,

I am working on Red hat linux 7.3. I have gcc 3.3 installed on my box.
I compiled my file as 

gcc a.c -march=i686 -c -o a686.o

objdump -f a.o shows following output

a686.o:     file format elf32-i386
architecture: i386, flags 0x00000011:
HAS_RELOC, HAS_SYMS
start address 0x00000000

This means, though I have compiled my source with march=i686 option the
object file header it throughs is of i386. I confirmed the instructions
output by for both i386 and i686 options. There I found the difference. 
This means the compiler output the i686 instructions properly with
the option set. I am interested why it does not through the file header
of object file of type i686. 

Please correct me if i am missing something..

Thanks in advance..


..Bansidhar