Loader (computing) - Responsibilities

Responsibilities

In Unix, the loader is the handler for the system call execve. The Unix loader's tasks include:

1. validation (permissions, memory requirements etc.);
2. copying the program image from the disk into main memory;
3. copying the command-line arguments on the stack;
4. initializing registers (e.g., the stack pointer);
5. jumping to the program entry point (_start).