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libc − Overview of standard C libraries on Linux
The term "libc" is commonly used as a shorthand for the "standard C library", a library of standard functions that can be used by all C programs (and sometimes by programs in other languages). Because of some history (see below), use of the term "libc" to refer to the standard C library is somewhat ambiguous on Linux.
glibc
By far the most widely used C library on Linux is the GNU C
Library (http://www.gnu.org/software/libc/), often
referred to as glibc. This is the C library that is
nowadays used in all major Linux distributions. It is also
the C library whose details are documented in the relevant
pages of the man-pages project (primarily in Section
3 of the manual). Documentation of glibc is also available
in the glibc manual, available via the command info
libc. Release 1.0 of glibc was made in September 1992.
(There were earlier 0.x releases.) The next major release of
glibc was 2.0, at the beginning of 1997.
The pathname /lib/libc.so.6 (or something similar) is normally a symbolic link that points to the location of the glibc library, and executing this pathname will cause glibc to display various information about the version installed on your system.
Linux
libc
In the early to mid 1990s, there was for a while Linux
libc, a fork of glibc 1.x created by Linux developers
who felt that glibc development at the time was not
sufficing for the needs of Linux. Often, this library was
referred to (ambiguously) as just "libc". Linux
libc released major versions 2, 3, 4, and 5 (as well as many
minor versions of those releases). For a while, Linux libc
was the standard C library in many Linux distributions.
However, notwithstanding the original motivations of the
Linux libc effort, by the time glibc 2.0 was released, it
was clearly superior to Linux libc, and all major Linux
distributions that had been using Linux libc soon switched
back to glibc. (Since this switch occurred over a decade
ago, man-pages no longer takes care to document Linux
libc details. Nevertheless, the history is visible in
vestiges of information about Linux libc that remain in some
manual pages, in particular, references to libc4 and
libc5.)
Other C
libraries
There are various other less widely used C libraries for
Linux. These libraries are generally smaller than glibc,
both in terms of features and memory footprint, and often
intended for building small binaries, perhaps targeted at
development for embedded Linux systems. Among such libraries
are uClibc (http://www.uclibc.org/) and
dietlibc (http://www.fefe.de/dietlibc/).
Details of these libraries are generally not covered by the
man-pages project.
syscalls(2), feature_test_macros(7), man-pages(7), standards(7)
This page is part of release 3.27 of the Linux man-pages project. A description of the project, and information about reporting bugs, can be found at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.
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glibc(7) | |