Question

I was wondering about the standard C libraries that contain all the functions/definitions like abs(), cout streams, printf, etc.

I’m familiar with the header files (stdio.h, cmath.h, time.h, etc etc) but there doesn’t seem to be any corresponding .lib or .dll anywhere (ie. stdio.lib, time.dll, etc).

Where is the actual code for the functions in these header files? Am I misunderstanding something? Is there like, one huge lib file that contains all the standardized stuff, or one for each header?

Any help appreciated!!

Thanks!

Answer 1

It depends on the implementation. On Windows, the standard library functionality is in the C and C++ runtime libraries. The C runtime library is always linked in automatically; the C++ runtime library is linked in automatically if you include one of the standard library headers.