Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!hplabs!hpda!motcsd!dms!albaugh
From: albaugh@dms.UUCP (Mike Albaugh)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: what is BSS and BSSEND
Message-ID: <639@dms.UUCP>
Date: 9 Mar 89 16:49:35 GMT
References: <15498@cup.portal.com>
Distribution: usa
Organization: Atari Games Inc., Milpitas, CA
Lines: 26

From article <15498@cup.portal.com>, by Tim_CDC_Roberts@cup.portal.com:
> In article <15487@cup.portal.com>, Joseph C McDonald asks:
> 
>> ... what to BSS and BSSEND stand for?
> 
> ... "BSS" stands for "Block Starting with Symbol"....
> 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.

	IBM 1401 and 1620 "SPS" assemblers had BES, having exactly this
meaning. One practical use for such a beast was to declare arrays to be
accessed from Fortran which, because of the way indexing worked on the 70[49]*
series were referenced _backwards_. There was, of course, no hardware reason
to do this on the 1401 or 1620, but getting EQUIVALENCE to work might have been
a thrill, so it was done for backward (pun intended) compatability. You might
also use such a construct to declare a software stack which grew down...

	I remain unconvinced that this is the C meaning, though. I was told
by a *nix guru (albeit self-proclaimed) that stands for Blank (Storage/Static)
(Section/Segment). I would guess that only dmr could answer definitively.

> 
> - Tim_CDC_Roberts@cup.portal.com                     Control Data...
> ...!sun!portal!cup.portal.com!tim_cdc_roberts         ...or it will control you