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From: rep@genrad.UUCP (Pete Peterson)
Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards
Subject: Re: where does bss come from?
Message-ID: <992@genrad.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 2-Sep-86 11:07:13 EDT
Article-I.D.: genrad.992
Posted: Tue Sep  2 11:07:13 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 2-Sep-86 21:08:36 EDT
References: <2627@burdvax.UUCP>
Reply-To: rep@genrad.UUCP (Pete Peterson)
Organization: GenRad, Inc., Concord, Mass.
Lines: 16
Keywords: bss

In article <2627@burdvax.UUCP> eric@burdvax.UUCP (Eric Marshall) writes:
>
>	Could someone please tell me where the name BSS comes from.
>The comments in /usr/include/a.out.h says that it is uninitialized
>data. What's the connection?
>
This first place I saw "BSS" was in the FAP assembler for IBM 704,709,
etc.  (Vacuum tube computers at the end of the 1950's).  It was a
pseudo-instruction meaning "block starting with symbol" which assigned
a label to the value of the current-location-counter then incremented
the current-location-counter by the supplied argument, e.g.  FUBAR  BSS
500 left an uninitialized block 500 words long whose and assigned FUBAR
to the first location of the block.  There was also a BES in case you
wanted your label at the end of the block instead of the beginning.

	pete peterson