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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-21T23:12:34+00:00

In the gcc manual it is given that The C standard library itself is

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In the gcc manual it is given that “The C standard library itself
is stored in ‘/usr/lib/libc.a’”. I have gcc installed, but could not find libc.a at the said location. Curious to know where is it located.

I find many .so files in /usr/lib location. What are those?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    A few things:

    • gcc and glibc are two different things. gcc is the compiler, glibc are the runtime libraries. Pretty much everything needs glibc to run.
    • .a files are static libraries, .so means shared object and is the Linux equivalent of a DLL
    • Most things DON’T link against libc.a, they link against libc.so

    Hope that clears it up for you. As for the location, it’s almost certainly going to be in /usr/lib/libc.a and / or /usr/lib/libc.so. Like I said, the .so one is the more common.

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