SAS/C Cross-Platform Compiler and C++ Development System User's Guide, Release 6.50

ar370 Archives

An ar370 archive library is a collection of object files, similar to a partitioned data set under MVS or a TXTLIB under CMS. The advantage of ar370 archives is that they combine several files into one file, and they maintain a list of definitions of variables and functions. The items in the list are not limited in length, which allows references to long symbols to be resolved during linking. Furthermore, collecting many objects together in one ar370 archive can provide a single file for managing these objects.

Note: External references to variables are resolved by extracting files that define the reference from the ar370 archive. This is similar to the autocall process under MVS or CMS; however, there is an important distinction. On MVS and CMS, a reference is resolved by examining the names of the members of the partitioned data set or TXTLIB. Under UNIX, cool determines which file contains a defining instance of a reference by examining the ar370 generated symbol table, which is part of the ar370 archive. Thus, references are resolved following a mechanism that is more common to UNIX implementations.

The ar370 utility used to create and manage ar370 archives is described in ar370 Archive Utility . [cautend]

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