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Libraries

Plug-in C expansions. Header files.

The core of the C language is small and simple, but special functionality is provided in the form of external libraries of ready-made functions. Standardized libraries make C code extremely portable, or easy to compile on many different computers.

Libraries are files of ready-compiled code that the compiler merges, or links, with a C program during compilation. For example, there are libraries of mathematical functions, string handling functions, and input/output functions. Indeed, most of the facilities C offers are provided as libraries.

Some libraries are provided for you. You can also make your own, but to do so, you will need to know how GNU builds libraries. We will discuss that later. (See Building a library.)

Most C programs include at least one library. You need to ensure both that the library is linked to your program and that its header files are included in your program.

The standard C library, or glibc, is linked automatically with every program, but header files are never included automatically, so you must always include them yourself. Thus, you must always include stdio.h in your program if you intend to use the standard input/output features of C, even though glibc, which contains the input/output routines, is linked automatically.

Other libraries, however, are not linked automatically. You must link them to your program yourself. For example, to link the math library libm.so, type

gcc -o program_name program_name.c -lm

The command-line option to link libm.so is simply -lm, without the lib or the .so, or in the case of static libraries, .a. (See Kinds of library.)

The -l option was created because the average GNU system already has many libraries, and more can be added at any time. This means that sometimes two libraries provide alternate definitions of the same function. With judicious use of the -l option, however, you can usually clarify to the compiler which definition of the function should be used. Libraries specified earlier on the command line take precedence over those defined later, and code from later libraries is only linked in if it matches a reference (function definition, macro, global variable, etc.) that is still undefined. (See Compiling multiple files, for more information.)

In summary, you must always do two things: