Re^2: BSS data segment

[Stephen J. Friedl]

In article <312 at hitech.ht.oz>, clyde at 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 at vsi.com

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