[SOLVED] Location of C standard library

Issue

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?

Solution

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.

Answered By - Chris Eberle