what is BSS and BSSEND

[Tim_CDC_Roberts at cup.portal.com]

In article <15487 at cup.portal.com>, Joseph C McDonald asks:

> ... what to BSS and BSSEND stand for?

Time to open our ancient history tomes.  I am sure some other poster will
be able to provide the original assembler to define these pseudo-ops, but
"BSS" stands for "Block Starting with Symbol".  It is typically an
assembler pseudo-op to reserve storage without initialization.  Your
C compiler is probably gathering the uninitialized items into one location.
Of course, in C this is a little contradictory, since no item is truly
uninitialized.

The Control Data assemblers for NOS and for NOS/VE still use "BSS" to
define storage.  Unverifiable rumor holds that there used to be a "BES"
pseudo for "Block Ending at Symbol", although it is difficult to see a
practical use for such a beast.

- Tim_CDC_Roberts at cup.portal.com                     Control Data...
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