where does bss come from?

[Robert Adams]

> BSS goes back further than the CDC 6000 series. We used it on the CDC 1600
> and 160 series. Actually it means 'Block Start Symbol' the label of the
> statement refering to the first byte of a block of un-initialized storage.
> Correspondingly there was a BES or 'Block Ending Symbol' where the label
> refered to the last byte of the un-initialized block of storage.
> 
> Mike McGann
> ...mcvax!cernvax!hslrswi!mwm

My information was that the BSS/BES was developed for the IBM
70x0 series (7090 or "Stretch" series).  The "Block Ended by Symbol"
was required because the instruction set subtracted the index
registers (saved the hardware guys a level of inverters or something).
This was also the machine that set the Fortran "standard" of
backwards array calculation because of the way subscripts were
best calculated and because of the subtracting of indexes.

The "Stretch" series was designed in the late 50s and early 60s
and was a line of (then) big computers that IBM dropped when it
put all of its eggs in the 360 basket.

	-- Robert Adams
	...!{decvax,ihnp4,hplabs,cbosgd}!tektronix!reed!omssw2!adams