Extracting information from LIB files

The IBM OS/2 Warp Toolkit includes several import library (LIB) files. This is some quick tutorial on how to get information from this files.

Using LIB.EXE

The Microsoft Library Manager (LIB.EXE) is contained in c7os2.zip.

To get some information on what OS2386.LIB contains you can call:

LIB OS2386.LIB, OS2386.LST

It will generate the os2386.lst text file with something similar to:

DDF32BEGINLIST....DDF32BEGINLIST    DDF32BITMAP.......DDF32BITMAP
DDF32ENDLIST......DDF32ENDLIST      DDF32HYPERTEXT....DDF32HYPERTEXT
...

IBM Library Manager (LIB.EXE) was shipped with IBM C Set/2 and later compiler products.

LIB /LISTLEVEL:2 OS2386.LIB, OS2386.LST

00004:Dos32ForceDelete (OFFSET:0x00000100, SIZE:0x0000003e):

Using EMXIMP.EXE

There is also a way to get information from a import library file using EMXIMP.EXE (emxdev1.zip):

emximp -o os2386.imp os2386.lib

It will generate something like:

;
; os2386.imp (created by emximp)
;
; -------- os2386.lib --------
DOSPTRACE               DOSCALLS  12 ?
DOSISETRELMAXFH         DOSCALLS 108 ?
DOSIDEVIOCTL            DOSCALLS 109 ?
DosForceDelete          DOSCALLS 110 ?
Dos32ForceDelete        DOSCALLS 110 ?
...