Imagine you're submitting a full program (as opposed to a function) written in assembly / machine code. You'll want to submit it as machine code (with the appropriate processor and target system) because there's a 1:1 mapping, but the machine code format is much more concise.

In this answer, it's suggested to sumbit a function, because some executable format would add a lot of boilerplate. My question is: Does this boilerplate really count to the bytes for a machine code sumbission?

I recently submitted some C64 machine code and with the very simple executable format of the C64, the difference is only two bytes: The load address of the code is in the first two bytes of the executable file. Before finding the question I linked, I assumed those two bytes are not part of the program. Am I wrong here?

Imagine you're submitting a full program (as opposed to a function) written in assembly / machine code. You'll want to submit it as machine code (with the appropriate processor and target system) because there's a 1:1 mapping, but the machine code format is much more concise.

In this answer, it's suggested to submit a function, because some executable format would add a lot of boilerplate. My question is: Does this boilerplate really count to the bytes for a machine code submission?

I recently submitted some C64 machine code and with the very simple executable format of the C64, the difference is only two bytes: The load address of the code is in the first two bytes of the executable file. Before finding the question I linked, I assumed those two bytes are not part of the program. Am I wrong here?