Difference between DLL and exe

[madhu_raju76]

hi friends,
can any body tell me the difference between the dll and exe

[Ancient Dragon]

A DLL is a collection of code that is shared among several programs. Instead of duplicating that code in every program people put the code in a DLL so that every program can use it. The operating system running on your computer is a very good example -- the installation directory will contain many many DLLs

[sittas87]

good info,never bothered to research that

[madhu_raju76]

hmm...dll cant execute itself but exe can....

wats the main purpose of dll instead it cant execute itself

[sittas87]

hmm...dll cant execute itself but exe can....

wats the main purpose of dll instead it cant execute itself

Ohk id like to answer you ther exe is for sefl extracting of that specific program whereas dll holds files that you that some various programs/system uses when operating

feel free to correct me if im wrong

[sahil_itprof]

Hi friend...

Actually the basic difference between these two is as follows....

A DLL (Dynamic Link Library) is so named because it is linked with your ordinalry EXE at run time (i.e. dynamically). So the size of the EXE don't go out of the hand because only necessary functions are referenced at runtime. Thus the DLL contain the set of functions which you may refer as Windows API, they are also stored in DLLs. And these DLLs are reusable.

An EXE is just the Binary form of your application that can be easily executed by our systems. For eg. MSWord...

The other difference is that the DLL runs in the same memory space as the application is running while an EXE runs in its own memory space. So the dll is in process and exe is out of process.

The variables and the functions included in a DLL are generally referenced using relative paths whereas in EXE they are referenced by absolute pathing...

The DLL can't be ran standalone, it is linked to the EXE while the EXE can be ran standalone..

This is the best I could give you..

Thank You...

[sittas87]

well said sahil

[sahil_itprof]

Thank you sir....

And I kindly requyest you to give reply to this thread if you get any more information about that difference...

Sahil Akhunji

[mosanta]

Hi guys m new in the .msi compilation and I'm required to use make an msi that will install the component by executing it. The assembly i have is .exe and how do u execute that using custom actions in wix since i dont have a .dll file to reference as a binary?