Re: Bug#228506: marked as done (gcc-3.3: initalizing to zero equals uninitialised)

[Daniel Jacobowitz <dan@debian.org>]

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