A segment is a collection of information.  It is the basic unit of
storage on Multics, analagous to a file on many other systems.  A single
segment may be empty or contain up to over a million printed characters.
Segments are usually created by entering information by way of a text editor
and then assigning a name to that collection of information.  But segments can
also be created with the create "command" or by programs, which are themselves
segments.

     The name of a segment can be in either uppercase or lowercase letters,
though on Multics it is most common to use lowercase letters.  Multics
distinguishes between uppercase and lowercase, so the name SEGMENT is
different from segment.

     Segments may be known by several names.  You can put additional names on
a segment with the add_name command.  You can also change the name of a
segment by using the rename command.

     Segment names cannot contain blank spaces.  When you wish to use more
than one word, the underscore character is used in place of a blank space.
Words can also be separated by a period.  For example:

segment.output

A period usually indicates that the word following it is a meaningful suffix,
that is, the suffix is used on a number of segments to signify something about
those segments.  Multics has several suffixes that it uses in this way, and
you can invent your own for this purpose.


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Historical Background

This edition of the Multics software materials and documentation is provided and donated
to Massachusetts Institute of Technology by Group BULL including BULL HN Information Systems Inc. 
as a contribution to computer science knowledge.  
This donation is made also to give evidence of the common contributions of Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
Bell Laboratories, General Electric, Honeywell Information Systems Inc., Honeywell BULL Inc., Groupe BULL
and BULL HN Information Systems Inc. to the development of this operating system. 
Multics development was initiated by Massachusetts Institute of Technology Project MAC (1963-1970),
renamed the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence in the mid 1970s, under the leadership
of Professor Fernando Jose Corbato. Users consider that Multics provided the best software architecture 
for managing computer hardware properly and for executing programs. Many subsequent operating systems 
incorporated Multics principles.
Multics was distributed in 1975 to 2000 by Group Bull in Europe , and in the U.S. by Bull HN Information Systems Inc., 
as successor in interest by change in name only to Honeywell Bull Inc. and Honeywell Information Systems Inc. .

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Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute these programs and their documentation for any purpose and without
fee is hereby granted,provided that the below copyright notice and historical background appear in all copies
and that both the copyright notice and historical background and this permission notice appear in supporting
documentation, and that the names of MIT, HIS, BULL or BULL HN not be used in advertising or publicity pertaining
to distribution of the programs without specific prior written permission.
    Copyright 1972 by Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Honeywell Information Systems Inc.
    Copyright 2006 by BULL HN Information Systems Inc.
    Copyright 2006 by Bull SAS
    All Rights Reserved