On Mon, Dec 31, 2001 at 03:46:38PM -0800, Eric G. Miller wrote: > > Well, I dare you to remove 'ld' or 'libc.so' and see how many programs > run ;-) I think it's fair to characterize required language libraries > as part of the "run time" system. Whether or not a program is statically > compiled is unimportant, as the language library still performs actions > at runtime that "your" program depends on, and which "your" program > could not function without. Among those things, might be checking > array accesses and raising exceptions for range errors...
I assume you mean ld.so. The fact is that the C library is not needed in order to use C (else libc.so would require itself in a neverending loop). You can easily write C programs that use nothing from libc.so/libc.a. You can't write java, perl and python that don't need their runtime. The Linux kernel is an excellent example of a C program that is self-contained. Think of libraries as conveniences, not requirements. I would also point out that java, python, php and perl runtime are written in _C_. It's easy to characterize an interpreted language by noting that it's runtime executable is written in a language other than itself. -- .----------=======-=-======-=========-----------=====------------=-=-----. / Ben Collins -- Debian GNU/Linux \ ` [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] ' `---=========------=======-------------=-=-----=-===-======-------=--=---'