What is the use of dynload?

[gmhwxi]

The sole purpose of dynload is for doing initialization.

Say in a file named 'foo.dats', we have the following line:

dynload "bar.dats"

This line gets compiled to a call to the initialization function
associated with 'bar.dats'. Without this line, a link-time error message
of the form "..._dynload_flag is undefined" is to be reported.

If you don't want the initialization function for 'bar.dats' to be
called, then please add the following line in 'bar.dats':

#define ATS_DYNLOADFLAG 0

Please do this with caution.

Normally, 'dynload' lines should only occur in the file that contains the
implementation of the 'main' function.

[Brandon Barker]

Are there any examples or conventions related to naming initialization functions? I see plenty of .dats files without 

#define ATS_DYNLOADFLAG 0

but nothing necessarily stood out as an initialization function.

[gmhwxi]

The initialization functions are named internally and calls to these functions
are inserted by the compiler automatically.