Re: Rum-Time Library vs Standard Library
On Mar 5, 1:51 am, Tristan Wibberley <maihem-...@maihem.org> wrote:
On Tue, 2008-03-04 at 16:29 -0800, Carmen Sei wrote:
what are the difference between
Rum-Time Library vs Standard Library
The standard library is a particular set of defined names and
headers as defined in the C++ standard document, a runtime
library is a blob of binary stuff that is used as a part of
the compiled program but is not included in your program
executables because it is so commonly needed.
You make it sound as if a runtime library must be dynamically
linked. That's not true---in the past, they were almost always
statically linked (if only because the systems back then didn't
support dynamic linking), and even today, you typically have a
choice.
I don't know if there is actually any formal definition of
runtime library. I've certainly seen it used in the sense of
any library for which you don't have the source code (or don't
use the source code, if it's open source). I think I've also
seen it used in a more restrictive sense, as the library which
provides the direct interface to the OS. And it's frequently
used to refer to the "bundled" libraries: those that are always
present on the machine (or delivered with the compiler).
FWIW: I'm not even sure that "runtime library" always refers to
a library. On early Unix, it was common to refer to crt0.o as
the runtime library, although it was an object file, and not a
library. (The "crt" in the name was for "C Run Time", and the 0
because it was the first thing run, before your own code.)
--
James Kanze (GABI Software) email:james.kanze@gmail.com
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