DLL vs Shared Library

[Phillip Susi]

Phillip Susi wrote:
> Yes, they are position-independent.  That is the one thing that 

Nevermind, I was confusing position-independent with relocatable. 
Technically you are correct; windows went with relocatable because it 
gives better execution speed.

> differentiates an exe from a dll: the dll is compiled to be position 
> independent, the exe is not.  Other than that, the file format is 
> exactly the same ( Portable Executable or PE format ).
> 
>> because the addresses have to be recomputed.
> 
> Not if they are loaded at their preferred address.  This is exactly the 
> same way that shared libraries work.
> 
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_(computer_science)#Shared_library
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Position_independent_code
>>
>>
> 
>