Date: Thu, 9 Jan 1997 07:34:20 -0500
Message-Id: <199701091234.HAA02473@delorie.com>
From: DJ Delorie <dj AT delorie DOT com>
To: eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il
CC: fighteer AT cs DOT com, djgpp AT delorie DOT com
In-reply-to: <Pine.SUN.3.91.970109131450.2825B-100000@is> (message from Eli
	Zaretskii on Thu, 9 Jan 1997 13:17:25 +0200 (IST))
Subject: Re: Involving non statndart LIB into project ?


> Actually, I think that the reason behind the -lxy -> libxy.a rule is the 
> simplistic method of parsing command line in early Unix linkers.  So they 
> invented an argument which looked like a switch but actually was a 
> reference to a filename.

Actually, it's much more.  The -l means that the linker should search
for the file in a number of known places, looking also for shared
versions of the library with the highest version number.  If you
specified the file explicitely (../lib/libfoo.a) you'd get exactly
that file.