On Mon, Jan 19, 2004 at 07:33:10AM -0800, Debian Bug Tracking System wrote: > Further reading leads me to realise that the .bss-section is supposed to > be zero-initialized. I've always thought of .bss as a non-initialized > section (and that's how it's documentented in numerous places).
Any such documentation is wrong. Has been wrong, at least since the creation of ELF: .bss This section holds uninitialized data that contribute to the program's memory image. By definition, the system initializes the data with zeros when the program begins to run. The section occu- pies no file space, as indicated by the section type, SHT_NOBITS . -- Daniel Jacobowitz MontaVista Software Debian GNU/Linux Developer