[TUHS] What does `ld` stand for?

[christopher fujino via TUHS]

On Sun, Oct 25, 2026 at 12:40 PM Warner Losh <imp at bsdimp.com> wrote:

> 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
>

Ahh, thanks Warner. I checked for v1 sources (which it didn't have), but
didn't think to check manpages.

- Chris


> 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
>> >
>>
>