Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!vsi!friedl From: friedl@vsi.COM (Stephen J. Friedl) Newsgroups: comp.lang.c Subject: Re: Re^2: BSS data segment Summary: shameless name-dropping Message-ID: <1168@vsi.COM> Date: 16 Aug 89 23:42:28 GMT References: <69@harald.UUCP> <312@hitech.ht.oz> Organization: V-Systems, Inc. -- Santa Ana, CA Lines: 35 In article <312@hitech.ht.oz>, clyde@hitech.ht.oz (Clyde Smith-Stubbs) writes: > I always thought it was Block Storage Segment. I promised myself that I wouldn't post this unless I saw more than two wrong answers, so here goes. I hope dmr doesn't mind clearing the air indirectly: < To: vsi!friedl < From: attmail!research!dmr < Date: Sat Nov 12 08:52 GMT 1988 < Subject: BSS < < Actually the acronym (in the sense we took it up; it may < have other credible etymologies) is "Block Started by Symbol." < It was a pseudo-op in FAP (Fortran Assembly [-er?] Program), an < assembler for the IBM 704-709-7090-7094 machines. It defined < its label and set aside space for a given number of words. < There was another pseudo-op, BES, "Block Ended by Symbol" < that did the same except that the label was defined by < the last assigned word + 1. (On these machines Fortran < arrays were stored backwards in storage and were 1-origin.) < < The usage is reasonably appropriate, because just as with < standard Unix loaders, the space assigned didn't have to < be punched literally into the object deck but was represented < by a count somewhere. < < Dennis Ritchie -- Stephen J. Friedl / V-Systems, Inc. / Santa Ana, CA / +1 714 545 6442 3B2-kind-of-guy / {attmail uunet}!vsi!{bang!}friedl / friedl@vsi.com "My new bestseller, _Teach_Yourself_to_Read_, is now available everywhere" -me