[TUHS] What does `ld` stand for?

[Douglas McIlroy via TUHS]

Technically exec(2) was the loader.  ld was generally invoked
subliminally and rarely recursively. Thus, in conversation it was
known as "loader", a converter from relocatable binary to core image.
The man page, however, carefully characterized its full recursive
capability.

Doug

On Sun, Oct 25, 2026 at 3:40 PM Warner Losh via TUHS <tuhs at tuhs.org> 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
>
> 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
> > >
> >