Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!decwrl!sun!imagen!atari!portal!cup.portal.com!Tim_CDC_Roberts
From: Tim_CDC_Roberts@cup.portal.com
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: what is BSS and BSSEND
Message-ID: <15498@cup.portal.com>
Date: 7 Mar 89 17:32:20 GMT
References: <15487@cup.portal.com>
Distribution: usa
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
Lines: 19

In article <15487@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@cup.portal.com                     Control Data...
...!sun!portal!cup.portal.com!tim_cdc_roberts         ...or it will control you