[Gllug] bss etymology

[Per Gregers Bilse]

> From: Richard Jones <rich at annexia.org>
> Subject: Re: [Gllug] bss etymology
> 
> 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

Here's from the horse's mouth:

http://www.faqs.org/faqs/unix-faq/faq/part1/section-3.html

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.

  -- Per


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