[TUHS] What does `ld` stand for?

[Warner Losh via TUHS]

The first edition manual is at
https://www.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=V1/man/man1/ld.1

And says the same thing. As do later editions.

Warner

On Sun, Oct 25, 2026, 12:09 PM christopher fujino via TUHS <tuhs at tuhs.org>
wrote:

> It looks like the earliest source for `ld` I can find on TUHS is from v2:
> https://www.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=V2/cmd/ld1.s
>
> / ld1 -- link editor
>
> Could it stand for "link editor"?
>
> - Chris
>
> On Sun, Oct 25, 2026 at 10:58 AM Erik E. Fair <fair at clock.org> wrote:
>
> > In some corners, programs were put together by a "loader" (as in, put a
> > program into a state ready to be loaded into RAM for execution) rather
> than
> > a linker, and it may be whoever named ld(1) had that in mind when picking
> > minimal letters to type to invoke Unix programs. However, "loader" can
> also
> > be short for "boot loader" (as in, the small amount of bootstrap code
> > needed to load an OS as part of making a computer operationally useful).
> >
> > To be sure, you'd have to ask whoever wrote/named ld(1).
> >
> >         Erik
> >
>