Runtime library
This article needs additional citations for verification. (December 2013) |
Program execution |
---|
General concepts |
Types of code |
Compilation strategies |
|
Notable runtimes |
|
Notable compilers & toolchains |
|
In
The runtime library may implement a portion of the runtime environment's behavior, but if one reads the code of the calls available, they are typically only thin wrappers that simply package information, and send it to the runtime environment or operating system. However, sometimes the term runtime library is meant to include the code of the runtime environment itself, even though much of that code cannot be directly reached via a library call.
For example, some language features that can be performed only (or are more efficient or accurate) at runtime are implemented in the runtime environment and may be invoked via the runtime library API, e.g. some logic errors, array bounds checking, dynamic type checking, exception handling, and possibly debugging functionality. For this reason, some programming bugs are not discovered until the program is tested in a "live" environment with real data, despite sophisticated compile-time checking and testing performed during development.
As another example, a runtime library may contain code of built-in low-level operations too complicated for their
The concept of a runtime library should not be confused with an ordinary
crt0
), but defines a large standard library (called C standard library) that has to be provided by each implementation.[1]See also
References
- ^ a b Bennett, Jeremy (July 2010). "The C Runtime Initialization, crt0.o". Howto: Porting newlib. Embecosm. Retrieved 2013-12-30.
- ^ a b "4. The GCC low-level runtime library". Internals of the GNU compilers. GNU. Retrieved 2013-12-30.
- ^ "Other Built-in Functions Provided by GCC". GCC Introduction. GNU. Retrieved 2013-12-30.
External links
- What is the C runtime library? (StackExchange)