From: David Collier-Brown via talk <talk@gtalug.org>
BSS is "block staring with symbol". RSS is "really simple syndication" .. or just /maybe/ "rat starting with symbol" (:-))
RSS could (more relevantly) be Resident Set Size. But that's a runtime property. BSS (Block Starting with Symbol) was an IBM 7xx or 7xxx series assembler statement for reserving but not initializing a chunk of memory. Something like * RESERVE 1 36-BIT WORD AND NAME IT "COUNTER" COUNTER BSS 1 * RESERVE ENOUGH SPACE FOR A LINE OF TEXT (6 CHARACTERS PER WORD) LINE BSS 120 / 6 BES was Block Ending with Symbol. The label is given the address of the last word. BES hasn't been immortalized. IBM assembers for later machines used DS instead of BSS. This is where BSS segment name came from. The segment is just for statically allocated but not initialized memory. The mnemonic is no longer mnemonic.