SQUOZE

IBM's SQUOZE was a representation of a relocatable program object file with a symbol table on punched cards in the SHARE 709 operating system. A program in this format was called a SQUOZE deck.

Identifiers in the symbol table were represented in a 50-character alphabet, allowing a 36-bit word to represent 6 alphanumeric characters plus 2 flag bits, because 50⁶ < 2³⁴.

The name SQUOZE was later borrowed for similar schemes used on DEC machines; they had a 40-character alphabet (50 in octal) and were called DEC Squoze or DEC Radix-50.

Etymology

"Squoze" is a facetious past participle of the verb 'to squeeze'.

Bibliography

E.M. Boehm, T.B. Steel, Jr., "The SHARE 709 System: Machine Implementation of Symbolic Programming", Journal of the ACM 6:2:134-140 (April 1959) doi:10.1145/320964.320968

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