A DLL can have only one instance.Īn application can be loaded as a process.

From the system's point of view, there are two fundamental differences between applications and DLLs:Īn application can have multiple instances of itself running in the system simultaneously. The most obvious difference is that you can't run a DLL. If present, a special function in the DLL, DllMain, is called to do any initialization the DLL requires.ĭifferences between applications and DLLsĮven though DLLs and applications are both executable modules, they differ in several ways. When the loader loads a DLL, the DLL is mapped into the memory space of your application. When you build an executable that calls the DLL, the linker uses the exported symbols in the import library to store this information for the Windows loader. When you create a DLL, you also create an import library that contains this information. Dynamic linking includes only the information needed by Windows at run time to locate and load the DLL that contains a data item or function. Static linking copies all the object code in a static library into the executables that use it when they're built. Differences between dynamic linking and static linking Multiple applications can access the contents of a single copy of a DLL in memory at the same time. DLLs also make it easy to share functions and resources across executables. It's done either when the application is loaded ( implicit linking), or on demand at runtime ( explicit linking). The operating system loads the DLL into an application's memory space. DLLs run in the context of the applications that call them. These functions and resources can be compiled and deployed separately from the executables that use them.Ī DLL isn't a stand-alone executable. It enables an executable to call functions or use resources stored in a separate file. Dynamic linking is an operating system capability. In Windows, a dynamic-link library (DLL) is a kind of executable file that acts as a shared library of functions and resources.

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