[Gllug] bss etymology

Jack Bertram jack at jbertram.net
Wed Oct 29 11:01:30 UTC 2003


* Richard Jones <rich at annexia.org> [031029 10:58]:
> This is what it stands for. I'm still none-the-wiser as to why.
> 
> http://wombat.doc.ic.ac.uk/foldoc/foldoc.cgi?Block+Started+by+Symbol

http://www.westga.edu/~techlife/unix/part1_7.html

suggests the answer:

bss = "Block Started by Symbol"

Dennis Ritchie says:

Actually the acronym (in the sense we took it up; it may have other
credible etymologies) is "Block Started by Symbol." It was a pseudo-op
in FAP (Fortran Assembly [-er?] Program), an assembler for the IBM
704-709-7090-7094 machines. It defined its label and set aside space for
a given number of words. There was another pseudo-op, BES, "Block Ended
by Symbol" that did the same except that the label was defined by the
last assigned word + 1. (On these machines Fortran arrays were stored
backwards in storage and were 1-origin.)

The usage is reasonably appropriate, because just as with standard
Unix loaders, the space assigned didn't have to be punched literally
into the object deck but was represented by a count somewhere.



jack


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