How are regular and debug executables different?

[Alloy]

I see pretty much the same disassembly and know those extra files and the extra file size help associate it with the source file but are there any other differences?

[donkey]

Not really that different, they can't be. In essence it can contain line number information that associates a specific instruction with a line of source code and symbol table information that allows the debugger to display the actual name you give a variable. Besides that it really isn't that different, there are different types of debug builds, one that puts the information in the OBJ file and another that stores it in a PDB file but the information is essentially the same.