32 and 64-bit Environments

As described in "32- and 64-bit Environments", the 64-bit link-editor (ld(1)) is capable of generating 32-bit objects and the 32-bit link-editor is capable of generating 64-bit objects. Each of these objects has an associated support interface defined.

The support interface for 64-bit objects is similar to that of 32-bit objects, but ends in a 64 suffix, for example ld_start() and ld_start64(). This convention allows both implementations of the support interface to reside in a single shared object libldstab.so.1 of each class, 32-bit and 64-bit.