Software Library

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What Does Software Library Mean?

A software library is a suite of data and programming code that is used to develop software programs and applications. It is designed to assist both the programmer and the programming language compiler in building and executing software.

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Techopedia Explains Software Library

A software library generally consists of pre-written code, classes, procedures, scripts, configuration data and more. Typically, a developer might manually add a software library to a program to achieve more functionality or to automate a process without writing code for it. For example, when developing a mathematical program or application, a developer may add a mathematics software library to the program to eliminate the need for writing complex functions. All of the available functions within a software library can just be called/used within the program body without defining them explicitly. Similarly, a compiler might automatically add a related software library to a program on run time.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology expert

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of ​​a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.