Run Time (program Lifecycle Phase) - Implementation Details

Implementation Details

In certain cases, the execution of a program begins after a loader performed the necessary memory setup and linked the program with any dynamically linked libraries it needs. In some cases a language or implementation will have these tasks done by the language runtime instead, though this is unusual in mainstream languages on common consumer operating systems.

Some program debugging can only be performed (or is more efficient or accurate) when performed at runtime. Logic errors and array bounds checking are examples. For this reason, some programming bugs are not discovered until the program is tested in a "live" environment with real data, despite sophisticated compile-time checking and pre-release testing. In this case, the end user may encounter a runtime error message.