where does bss come from?

[Roy Smith]

In article <2627 at burdvax.UUCP> eric at 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?

	I believe BSS stands for Block Started by Symbol.  An external
declaration such as "int iarray [100];" will typically get compiled into
something like the following meta-assembler code:

	.bss			; start assembling into bss segment
iarray:	.word 100		; allocate 100 words of space
-- 
Roy Smith, {allegra,philabs}!phri!roy
System Administrator, Public Health Research Institute
455 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016