BSS means...

[jhc at hou5a.UUCP]

BSS stands for 'Blamk Starting Segment' and is the area
wherein are kept static and external variables not initialized
to anything in the program (but see below). The area is
guaranteed to be set to 0s by the time main is entered (see
C reference manual section 8.6 para 3 (p198)).
Anyone know which compilers (if any) put initialized-to-zero
variables into bss, rather than data?

Jonathan Clark
[houx*|ariel|vax135|eagle]!hou5a!jhc