2.4 Library Names

Standard C++ Library libraries for Unix use this encoding scheme:

libstd<buildtype>.<ext>

Static and import Standard C++ Library libraries for Windows use this encoding scheme:

std<buildtype>.<ext>

Dynamic Standard C++ Library libraries for Windows use this encoding scheme:

std<buildtype>.<ext>

These schemes are explained in Table 7.

Table 7 -- Library name encoding

Code	Meaning
`lib`	Indicates that this is a library. (Unix only.)
`std`	Indicates that this is a Standard C++ Library part.
`<buildtype>`	Indicates the build type, explained in Section 2.5.
`<ext>`	Indicates the extension. For Windows static libraries and DLL import libraries, the extension is `lib`. For Windows DLLs, the extension is `dll`. For Unix, the extension naming convention varies from one platform to another. Here are some possible values: `.a` = static library (`ns.a` for AIX) `.so`, `.sl`, etc. = shared library, depending upon the platform Note: Always use the library binding character to determine whether a library is static or shared.

For example, if you use a Unix compiler to build a multithreaded, static library that provides symbolic debugging and assertions, the resulting library name is:

libstd15s.a

The same library built using any compiler on Windows NT or Windows 95 is named:

std15s.lib