BSS data segment

[D. Chadwick Gibbons]

	I've seen the BSS data segment mentioned in several books.  Some
even have indepth sections describing how to create
efficently-initalizing programs by taking advantage of this feature.
However, I'm wondering if this is a C feature, or a phenonmenon of the
UNIX/MS-DOS environments.  It's extremely convient to have a section of
code auto-initialized to zero by the run-time system...perhaps a large
amount of global pointers, such as:

char *ptr1, *ptr2, *ptr3.......*ptr999, *ptr1000;

main();

etc, etc.  Things are thus auto-set to NULL, and the need for
initialization elsewhere does not exist.  Handy, indeed.
-- 
D. Chadwick Gibbons, chad at lakesys.lakesys.com, ...!uunet!marque!lakesys!chad