Why do you have to link the math library in C?

Question

If I include or in a C program I don\'t have to link these when compiling but I do have to link to

Answer 1

stdio is part of the standard C library which, by default, gcc will link against.

The math function implementations are in a separate libm file that is not linked to by default so you have to specify it -lm. By the way, there is no relation between those header files and library files.

Answer 2

Because time() and some other functions are builtin defined in the C library (libc) itself and GCC always links to libc unless you use the -ffreestanding compile option. However math functions live in libm which is not implicitly linked by gcc.

Answer 3

An explanation is given here:

So if your program is using math functions and including math.h, then you need to explicitly link the math library by passing the -lm flag. The reason for this particular separation is that mathematicians are very picky about the way their math is being computed and they may want to use their own implementation of the math functions instead of the standard implementation. If the math functions were lumped into libc.a it wouldn't be possible to do that.

[Edit]

I'm not sure I agree with this, though. If you have a library which provides, say, sqrt(), and you pass it before the standard library, a Unix linker will take your version, right?

Answer 4

Remember that C is an old language and that FPUs are a relatively recent phenomenon. I first saw C on 8-bit processors where it was a lot of work to do even 32-bit integer arithmetic. Many of these implementations didn't even have a floating point math library available!

Even on the first 68000 machines (Mac, Atari ST, Amiga), floating point coprocessors were often expensive add-ons.

To do all that floating point math, you needed a pretty sizable library. And the math was going to be slow. So you rarely used floats. You tried to do everything with integers or scaled integers. When you had to include math.h, you gritted your teeth. Often, you'd write your own approximations and lookup tables to avoid it.

Trade-offs existed for a long time. Sometimes there were competing math packages called "fastmath" or such. What's the best solution for math? Really accurate but slow stuff? Inaccurate but fast? Big tables for trig functions? It wasn't until coprocessors were guaranteed to be in the computer that most implementations became obvious. I imagine that there's some programmer out there somewhere right now, working on an embedded chip, trying to decide whether to bring in the math library to handle some math problem.

That's why math wasn't standard. Many or maybe most programs didn't use a single float. If FPUs had always been around and floats and doubles were always cheap to operate on, no doubt there would have been a "stdmath".

Answer 5

If I put stdlib.h or stdio.h, I don't have to link those but I have to link when I compile:

stdlib.h, stdio.h are the header files. You include them for your convenience. They only forecast what symbols will become available if you link in the proper library. The implementations are in the library files, that's where the functions really live.

Including math.h is only the first step to gaining access to all the math functions.

Also, you don't have to link against libm if you don't use it's functions, even if you do a #include <math.h> which is only an informational step for you, for the compiler about the symbols.

stdlib.h, stdio.h refer to functions available in libc, which happens to be always linked in so that the user doesn't have to do it himself.