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- Path: redstone.interpath.net!mercury!softbase
- From: softbase@mercury.interpath.net (Scott McMahan - Softbase Systems)
- Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
- Subject: Re: DLL's - Explanation needed...
- Date: 14 Feb 1996 17:15:03 GMT
- Organization: Interpath -- Providing Internet access to North Carolina
- Message-ID: <4ft5ao$d44@redstone.interpath.net>
- References: <4fc52q$per@newsstand.cit.cornell.edu> <kitk.2081.00092003@mudshark.sunquest.com>
- NNTP-Posting-Host: mercury.interpath.com
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-
- To play devil's advocate:
-
- Kit Kauffmann (kitk@mudshark.sunquest.com) wrote:
- : DLL's (Dynamic Link Libraries) are (fully) linked at runtime instead of
- : compile time (you provide a stub .LIB, but the actual resolution of function
- : calls occurs at runtime).
-
- Actually, you don't even have to link it at link time. You can completely
- dynamically load it.
-
- : 1. All the currently running programs can (re-) use the code from a
- : single library
- : 2. The library code/data can be changed without relinking the program
-
- Just to play devil's advocate:
-
- 1. Any program can install an old version over the new one,
- rendering the new library and any programs that
- depend on it useless
- (a corollary is any program can keep an old version
- somewhere else besides the main system directory
- and load that, and since it is in memory any
- program wanting the new library can't run!)
- 2. I've never seen two language implementations use the
- same runtime library, not even the same language.
- 3. Most code outside of language is copyrighted, so if
- I wanted to use a routine and knew the calling
- sequence, I still probably couldn't.
-
- DLL's are a great idea that were executed badly.
-
- Scott
-
-