Plugin architecture

ello /prog/ i was wondering if you could help me with a question i've been asking myself for some time: how do plugin architectures work? how do languages like C (un)load plugin code from files? it's a mystery to me... or do you just create a char pointer, load the file into it and JMP to the first position? can you do this in pure C or do you need ASM? elighten me

>>2
I was expecting the second two links to be LoadLibrary and GetProcAddress.

>>3
The POSIX and Windows functions look almost exactly the same.