title: Possible to use a .dll on Linux
body: <p><strong>Question:</strong> Is it possible to compile a program on linux using a .dll file?</p>
  
  <p><strong>Where this is going:</strong>
  This .dll will be used to write a php extension to some proprietary software from a third party.</p>
  
  <p><strong>Background and Research:</strong></p>
  
  <p>I have been given a library called <code>proprietary.lib</code>.  I was curious, as I have never seen the <code>.lib</code> extension before, so I typed:</p>
  
  <pre><code>file proprietary.lib
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The output was:</p>
  
  <pre><code>proprietary.lib:  current ar archive
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I did some research and found that <code>ar</code> is more-or-less <code>tar</code> (and in fact, I guess <code>tar</code> has since replaced <code>ar</code> in most *nix environments).</p>
  
  <p>Upon inspecting the <code>ar</code> manpage, I saw the <code>t option</code>, which displays a table listing of the contents of that archive.  Cool.  So I type:</p>
  
  <pre><code>ar t proprietary.lib
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>And get:</p>
  
  <pre><code>proprietary.dll
  proprietary.dll
  ... (snip X lines) ...
  </code></pre>