In computer programming, the name .bss or bss is used by many compilers and linkers for the portion of an object file or executable containing statically-allocated variables that are not explicitly initialized to any value. It is often referred to as the "bss section" or "bss segment". Typically only the length of the bss section, but no data, is stored in the object file. The program loader allocates memory for the bss section when it loads the program. On some platforms, some or all of the bss section is initialized to zeroes. Unix-like systems and Windows initialize the bss section to zero, allowing C and C++ statically-allocated variables initialized to values represented with all bits zero to be put in the bss segment. Operating systems may use a technique called zero-fill-on-demand to efficiently implement the bss segment. In embedded software, the bss segment is mapped into memory that is initialized to zero by the C run-time system before main is entered. Some C run-time systems may allow part of the bss segment not to be initialized; C variables must explicitly be placed into that portion of the bss segment. On some computer architectures, the application binary interface also supports an sbss segment for "small data". Typically, these data items can be accessed using shorter instructions that may only be able to access a certain range of addresses. Architectures supporting thread-local storage might use a tbss section for uninitialized, static data marked as thread-local.
Origin
Historically, BSS is a pseudo-operation in UA-SAP, the assembler developed in the mid-1950s for the IBM 704 by Roy Nutt, Walter Ramshaw, and others at United Aircraft Corporation. The BSS keyword was later incorporated into FAP, IBM's standard assembler for its 709 and 7090/94 computers. It defined a label and reserved a block of uninitialized space for a given number of words. In this situation BSS served as a shorthand in place of individually reserving a number of separate smaller data locations. Some assemblers support a complementary or alternative directive BES, for Block Ended by Symbol, where the specified symbol corresponds to the end of the reserved block.
BSS in C
In C, statically-allocated objects without an explicit initializer are initialized to zero or a null pointer. Implementations of C typically represent zero values and null pointer values using a bit pattern consisting solely of zero-valued bits. Hence, the BSS segment typically includes all uninitialized objects declared at file scope as well as uninitialized static local variables ; static localconstants must be initialized at declaration, however, as they do not have a separate declaration, and thus are typically not in the BSS section, though they may be implicitly or explicitly initialized to zero. An implementation may also assign statically-allocated variables and constants initialized with a value consisting solely of zero-valued bits to the BSS section. Peter van der Linden, a C programmer and author, says, "Some people like to remember it as 'Better Save Space.' Since the BSS segment only holds variables that don't have any value yet, it doesn't actually need to store the image of these variables. The size that BSS will require at runtime is recorded in the object file, but BSS doesn't take up any actual space in the object file."
In Fortran, common block variables are allocated in this segment. Some compilers may, for 64-bit instruction sets, limit offsets, in instructions that access this segment, to 32 bits, limiting its size to 2 GB or 4 GB. Also, note that Fortran does not require static data to be initialized to zero. On those systems where the bss segment is initialized to zero, putting common block variables and other static data into that segment guarantees that it will be zero, but for portability, programmers should not depend on that.
