CentralNotice From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation , search This article's factual accuracy is disputed . Please help to ensure that disputed statements are reliably sourced . See the relevant discussion on the talk page . (June 2011) In computing , a data segment (often denoted .data ) is a portion of an object file or the corresponding virtual address space of a program that contains initialized static variables , that is, global variables and static local variables . The size of this segment is determined by the size of the values in the program's source code, and does not change at run time . The data segment is read-write, since the values of variables can be altered at run time. This is in contrast to the read-only data segment ( rodata segment or .rodata ), which contains static constants rather than variables; it also contrasts to t...