Bug 34088

Summary: a.out(5) fails to explain what bss is
Product: Documentation Reporter: Martin Faxer <gmh003532>
Component: Books & ArticlesAssignee: Tom Rhodes <trhodes>
Status: Closed FIXED    
Severity: Affects Only Me    
Priority: Normal    
Version: Latest   
Hardware: Any   
OS: Any   

Description Martin Faxer 2002-01-20 15:30:00 UTC
	The a.out(5) man page states that nobody agrees on what the 
	abbreviation bss stands for.
	This appears to be incorrect; after discussing on IRC and checking
	various sites on the internet everybody seems to agree upon the
	fact that it stands for "Block Started by Symbol".
	URL reference: http://www.faqs.org/faqs/unix-faq/faq/part1/section-3.html

Fix: 

Apply the following fix (or a better one; I'm not familiar with
	the mdoc(7) syntax) against rev 1.13 of the file
	/usr/src/share/man/man5/a.out.5:

	--- a.out.5.orig        Sun Jan 20 15:06:00 2002
	+++ a.out.5     Sun Jan 20 15:21:47 2002
	@@ -172,6 +172,10 @@
	 after the data segment.
	 The kernel loads the program so that this amount of writable memory
	 appears to follow the data segment and initially reads as zeroes.
	+.Po
	+.Em bss
	+= block started by symbol
	+.Pc
	 .It Fa a_syms
	 Contains the size in bytes of the symbol table section.
	 .It Fa a_entry
	@@ -456,7 +460,3 @@
	 the byte order of the
	 .Fa exec
	 header is machine-dependent.
	-.Pp
	-Nobody seems to agree on what
	-.Em bss
	-stands for.
How-To-Repeat: 	Check the BUGS section of the a.out(5) man page, rev 1.13.
Comment 1 Tom Rhodes freebsd_committer freebsd_triage 2002-04-15 03:05:48 UTC
State Changed
From-To: open->patched

I did look into this, and have just applied the patch to CURRENT, I'll 
apply to STABLE in 2 days.  Thanks for the submission! 


Comment 2 Tom Rhodes freebsd_committer freebsd_triage 2002-04-15 03:05:48 UTC
Responsible Changed
From-To: freebsd-doc->trhodes

I did look into this, and have just applied the patch to CURRENT, I'll 
apply to STABLE in 2 days.  Thanks for the submission!
Comment 3 Tom Rhodes freebsd_committer freebsd_triage 2002-04-16 15:52:16 UTC
State Changed
From-To: patched->closed

Just completed the MFC.  Thanks for the submission!