normal library and share library

Paul Howarth paul at city-fan.org
Mon May 9 21:48:37 UTC 2005


On Mon, 2005-05-09 at 15:40 -0600, lin q wrote:
> Hi,
>   In reading some ncurses document, I see that
> 
> 	libncurses.a (normal)
> 
> 	libncurses.so (shared)
> 
>   I wonder what exactly the difference is? Is "normal" meaning "static" 
> which all the libraries are statically built-in? And "shared" means the 
> library is dynamically linked and loaded?

Yes. Objects in a static library are copied into the target program when
it is built (linked). Objects in a dynamic library are linked to the
target program shortly before it is executed. The result of this is that
dynamically linked programs are generally smaller than statically-linked
programs. There are other advantages and disadvantages too; see
http://www.answers.com/topic/library-computer-science for more info.

Paul.
-- 
Paul Howarth <paul at city-fan.org>




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