about the OS 2 and Windows implementation dynamic linking of libraries in general Dynamic linker Example farm date September 2010 More footnotes date October 2009 Infobox file format name Dynamic link library icon Image DLL icon on Windows Vista.png 64px DLL Icon extension .dll mime application x msdownload type code magic MZ uniform type com.microsoft.windows dynamic link library owner Microsoft genre container for Shared library contained by extended from extended to standard Dynamic link library also written without the hyphen , or DLL , is Microsoft s implementation of the shared library concept in the Microsoft Windows and OS 2 operating system s. These libraries usually have the file extension tt DLL tt , tt OCX tt for libraries containing ActiveX controls , or tt DRV tt for legacy device driver system drivers . The file formats for DLLs are the same as for Windows EXE files that is, Portable Executable PE for 32 bit and 64 bit Windows, and New Executable NE for 16 bit Windows. As with EXEs, DLLs can contain Machine code code , data computing data , and resource Windows resources , in any combination. In the broader sense of the term, any data computer file file with the same file format can be called a resource DLL . Examples of such DLLs include icon computing icon libraries , sometimes having the extension tt ICL tt , and typeface font files, having the extensions tt FON tt and tt FOT tt . Citation needed date September 2010 Background for DLL The first versions of Microsoft Windows ran every program in a single address space . Every program was meant to co operate by yielding the CPU to other programs so that the graphical user interface GUI could multitask and be maximally responsive. All operating system level operations were provided by the underlying operating system MS DOS . All higher level services were provided by Windows Libraries Dynamic Link Libraries. The Drawing Application programming interface API , Graphics Device Interface GDI , was implem ... more details
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