Where did the text segment get its name?

Traditional assembler, and higher level compilers work with several memory segments, according to intended use. Hence, there is a data segment, a stack segment, a bss, and text segment. The text segment is also called the code segment.

Text segment? For machine code?

I have asked all the old-timers I could find, how something as unreadable as machine code came to be know as the "text segment". Every one of them agreed that, that was really what it was called, but none of them seemed to be surprised by it. And no one could offer an explanation.

Here's your chance to show off your geek history knowledge by enlightening us.

5 Answers
5

Going a little further with nos's comments, I turned up a scanned version of the GE-635 Programming Manual, and found the following in the section on the macro assembler:

The GE-625/635 Macro Assembler is
being provided to give the
professional programmers some of the
conveniences of a compiler and the
flexibility of an Assembler. [...] The
output options enable him to obtain
binary text in relocatable as well as
absolute formats.

So, it appears that the use of "binary text" was a GE colloquialism, or perhaps a commonly used term at the time (remember that those were the days when card readers/punches were used for much IO). So, one possible path is GE, to Multics via GE-645, to Unix via Bell Labs' work on Multics, to Linux.

Could it be because the program code, be it hard-to-read machine instructions, is really the program text - i.e. the text that contains the instructions? The same as when you call a calculus book a text book, although it is pretty hard to decipher unless you are familiar with the mathematical symbols that are the code..

From Wictionary:

I suggest that the meaning in computer terms is derived from the fact that the program is what is written into the computer before the program is run, as opposed to the data, which is read in, processed, and then written back out.

It might have something to do with the fact that the code section was usually read-only, and it could also contain strings of characters for the text messages the program could display to the user as messages. Hence the "text" section. This is in contrast to the "data" section which contains pieces of data that can be modified.

I suggest that the meaning references the assembler (in that case that is for what we are speaking about) language is text, readable text. So the segment .text can be traduced as segment where the code program (text) is written and where the text of the program is, but last is called segment .data. Also it can be called segment .code because is the segment where the program's code is.

In my opinion should be just called: .code (which is text and also it logically differenciates from the other sections).

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