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A comment on The Journey Before main(). Parent comment

Re:The Journey Before main() by matheusmoreira on Sunday October 26, 2025 @11:43AM (#45712781)
Loading means creating a memory image of the library. Linking means resolving the symbols to addresses within that memory image.

Loading a library and calling some functions from it is linking. The function pointer you receive is your link to the library function.

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Re:The Journey Before main() by forrestthewoods on Sunday October 26, 2025 @07:13PM (#45715897)
You’re not wrong per se. But it was phrased in a very linuxy way imho.

> Linking means resolving the symbols to addresses within that memory image.

Well, you can call LoadLibrary and GetProcAddress. Which is arguably linking. But does not use the linker at link time. Although LoadLibrary is in kernel32!

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