linker

programming, tool (linkage editor, link loader) A program

that combines one or more files containing object code from

separately compiled program modules into a single file

containing loadable or executable code

This process involves resolving references between the

modules and fixing the relocation information used by the

operating system kernel when loading the file into memory to

run it.

Under Unix, the linker is called "ld" and object files

have filename extension .o (object), .so (shared object), or

.lib (library), and the resulting executable is called

"a.out" by default.

(2001-10-13)