Linking and Loading

Linking and Loading are the utility programs that play a important role in the execution of a program. Linking intakes the object codes generated by the assembler and combines them to generate the executable module. On the other hand, the loading loads this executable module to the main memory for execution.

Loading: 
Bringing the program from secondary memory to main memory is called Loading.

Linking:

Establishing the linking between all the modules or all the functions of the program in order to continue the program execution is called linking.

Differences between Linking and Loading:

1. The key difference between linking and loading is that the linking generates the executable file of a program whereas, the loading loads the executable file obtained from the linking into main memory for execution.


2. The linking intakes the object module of a program generated by the assembler. However, the loading intakes the executable module generated by the linking.


3. The linking combines all object modules of a program to generate executable modules it also links the library function in the object module to built-in libraries of the high-level programming language. On the other hand, loading allocates space to an executable module in main memory.