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Bash (Unix shell)

Bash, short for Bourne-Again SHell, is a shell program and command language supported by the Free Software Foundation and first developed for the GNU Project by Brian Fox. Designed as a 100% free software alternative for the Bourne shell, it was initially released in 1989. Its moniker is a play on words, referencing both its predecessor, the Bourne shell, and the concept of rebirth.

Since its inception, Bash has gained widespread adoption and is commonly used as the default login shell for numerous Linux distributions. It holds historical significance as one of the earliest programs ported to Linux by Linus Torvalds, alongside the GNU Compiler (GCC). It is available on nearly all modern operating systems, making it a versatile tool in various computing environments.

As a command processor, Bash operates within a text window where users input commands to execute various tasks. It also supports the execution of commands from files, known as shell scripts, facilitating automation. In keeping with Unix shell conventions, Bash incorporates a rich set of features. The keywords, syntax, dynamically scoped variables and other basic features of the language are all copied from the Bourne shell (`sh`). Other features, e.g., history, are copied from the C shell (`csh`) and the Korn Shell (`ksh`). Bash is a POSIX-compliant shell, but with a number of extensions.

History
While bash is considered Unix-like, it's also available on MacOS, Windows, BeOS, and Haiku.

Brian Fox began coding Bash on January 10, 1988, after Richard Stallman became dissatisfied with the lack of progress being made by a prior developer. Stallman and the FSF considered a free shell that could run existing shell scripts so strategic to a completely free system built from BSD and GNU code that this was one of the few projects they funded themselves, with Fox undertaking the work as an employee of FSF. Fox released Bash as a beta, version .99, on June 8, 1989, and remained the primary maintainer until sometime between mid-1992 and mid-1994, when he was laid off from FSF and his responsibility was transitioned to another early contributor, Chet Ramey.

Since then, Bash has become by far the most popular shell among users of Linux, becoming the default interactive shell on that operating system's various distributions and on Apple's macOS releases before Catalina in October 2019. Bash has also been ported to Microsoft Windows and distributed with Cygwin and MinGW, to DOS by the DJGPP project, to Novell NetWare, to OpenVMS by the GNU project, to ArcaOS, and to Android via various terminal emulation applications.

In September 2014, Stéphane Chazelas, a Unix/Linux specialist, discovered a security bug in the program. The bug, first disclosed on September 24, was named Shellshock and assigned the numbers. The bug was regarded as severe, since CGI scripts using Bash could be vulnerable, enabling arbitrary code execution. The bug was related to how Bash passes function definitions to subshells through environment variables.

Features
As a command processor, Bash operates within a text window where users input commands to execute various tasks. It also supports the execution of commands from files, known as shell scripts, facilitating automation. In keeping with Unix shell conventions, Bash incorporates a rich set of features, including:
 * Interactive and non-interactive invocation
 * Execution of:
 * External (to the shell) UNIX-style commands, such as 'ls' or 'ln', which are actually separate programs
 * Internal "commands" such as aliases, built-ins or functions, and
 * Files containing such commands, i.e., "shell scripts," which do not require compilation before execution and which can be invoked as commands by using their filename.
 * Command history, jobs / job control and tab completion in interactive mode
 * A built-in "help" command, a man page, and an info page
 * Shell compatibility and portability (i.e., POSIX) modes
 * Control structures for condition-testing and iteration
 * UNIX-style pipelines
 * Configurable execution environment(s)
 * Command line parsing
 * Quoting rules
 * Parameters (or "variables"), arrays and associative arrays
 * "Command," arithmetic and "process" substitutions
 * "Word splitting"
 * Filename expansion (globbing) and pattern matching
 * Quote removal
 * Command name lookup, including "aliases," "functions," shell built-ins and shell keywords
 * Redirections of inputs, outputs and error data streams, including "here documents" and "here strings"
 * Subshells
 * Exit status codes
 * Signaling as a means of inter-process communication
 * Asynchronous execution
 * ANSI-C quoting
 * Brace and tilde expansions
 * Configurable prompt and command line editing with GNU readline in interactive mode
 * Shell and session startup files (dotfiles) such as '~/.bashrc'
 * Various settings and shell options with the 'set' and 'shopt' built-ins
 * Execution traces ("xtrace"): lightweight logging for debugging purposes

The keywords, syntax, dynamically scoped variables and other basic features of the language are all copied from sh. Other features, e.g., history, are copied from csh and ksh. Bash is a POSIX-compliant shell, but with a number of extensions.

The Bash command syntax is a superset of the Bourne shell command syntax. Bash supports brace expansion, command line completion (Programmable Completion), basic debugging and signal handling (using  ) since bash 2.05a  among other features. Bash can execute the vast majority of Bourne shell scripts without modification, with the exception of Bourne shell scripts stumbling into fringe syntax behavior interpreted differently in Bash or attempting to run a system command matching a newer Bash builtin, etc. Bash command syntax includes ideas drawn from the Korn Shell (ksh) and the C shell (csh) such as command line editing, command history ( command), the directory stack, the   and   variables, and POSIX command substitution syntax.

When a user presses the tab key within an interactive command-shell, Bash automatically uses command line completion, since beta version 2.04, to match partly typed program names, filenames and variable names. The Bash command-line completion system is very flexible and customizable, and is often packaged with functions that complete arguments and filenames for specific programs and tasks.

Bash's syntax has many extensions lacking in the Bourne shell. Bash can perform integer calculations ("arithmetic evaluation") without spawning external processes. It uses the  command and the   variable syntax for this purpose. Its syntax simplifies I/O redirection. For example, it can redirect standard output (stdout) and standard error (stderr) at the same time using the  operator. This is simpler to type than the Bourne shell equivalent ' '. Bash supports process substitution using the  and  syntax, which substitutes the output of (or input to) a command where a filename is normally used. (This is implemented through /proc/fd/ unnamed pipes on systems that support that, or via temporary named pipes where necessary).

When using the 'function' keyword, Bash function declarations are not compatible with Bourne/Korn/POSIX scripts (the KornShell has the same problem when using 'function'), but Bash accepts the same function declaration syntax as the Bourne and Korn shells, and is POSIX-conformant. Because of these and other differences, Bash shell scripts are rarely runnable under the Bourne or Korn shell interpreters unless deliberately written with that compatibility in mind, which is becoming less common as Linux becomes more widespread. But in POSIX mode, Bash conforms with POSIX more closely.

Bash supports here documents. Since version 2.05b Bash can redirect standard input (stdin) from a "here string" using the  operator.

Bash 3.0 supports in-process regular expression matching using a syntax reminiscent of Perl.

In February 2009, Bash 4.0 introduced support for associative arrays. Associative array indices are strings, in a manner similar to AWK or Tcl. They can be used to emulate multidimensional arrays. Bash 4 also switches its license to GPL-3.0-or-later; some users suspect this licensing change is why MacOS continues to use older versions. Apple finally stopped using Bash in its operating systems as default shell with the release of MacOS Catalina in 2019.

Brace expansion
Brace expansion, also called alternation, is a feature copied from the C shell. It generates a set of alternative combinations. Generated results need not exist as files. The results of each expanded string are not sorted and left to right order is preserved:

Users should not use brace expansions in portable shell scripts, because the Bourne shell does not produce the same output.

When brace expansion is combined with wildcards, the braces are expanded first, and then the resulting wildcards are substituted normally. Hence, a listing of JPEG and PNG images in the current directory could be obtained using:

In addition to alternation, brace expansion can be used for sequential ranges between two integers or characters separated by double dots. Newer versions of Bash allow a third integer to specify the increment.

When brace expansion is combined with variable expansion (A.K.A. parameter expansion and parameter substitution) the variable expansion is performed after the brace expansion, which in some cases may necessitate the use of the  built-in, thus:

Startup scripts
When Bash starts, it executes the commands in a variety of dot files. Unlike Bash shell scripts, dot files do typically have neither the execute permission enabled nor an interpreter directive like.

Legacy-compatible Bash startup example
The example  below is compatible with the Bourne shell and gives semantics similar to csh for the   and. The  is a short-circuit evaluation that tests if filename exists and is readable, skipping the part after the   if it is not.

Operating system issues in Bash startup
Some versions of Unix and Linux contain Bash system startup scripts, generally under the  directory. Bash executes these files as part of its standard initialization, but other startup files can read them in a different order than the documented Bash startup sequence. The default content of the root user's files may also have issues, as well as the skeleton files the system provides to new user accounts upon setup. The startup scripts that launch the X window system may also do surprising things with the user's Bash startup scripts in an attempt to set up user-environment variables before launching the window manager. These issues can often be addressed using a  or   file to read the   — which provides the environment variables that Bash shell windows spawned from the window manager need, such as xterm or Gnome Terminal.

Portability
Invoking Bash with the  option or stating   in a script causes Bash to conform very closely to the POSIX 1003.2 standard. Bash shell scripts intended for portability should take into account at least the POSIX shell standard. Some bash features not found in POSIX are:

 * Certain extended invocation options
 * Brace expansion
 * Arrays and associative arrays
 * The double bracket ... extended test construct and its regex matching
 * The double-parentheses arithmetic-evaluation construct (only (( ... )); $(( ... )) is POSIX)
 * Certain string-manipulation operations in parameter expansion
 * local for scoped variables
 * Process substitution
 * Bash-specific builtins
 * Coprocesses
 * $EPOCHSECONDS and $EPOCHREALTIME variables

If a piece of code uses such a feature, it is called a "bashism" – a problem for portable use. Debian's checkbashisms and Vidar Holen's shellcheck can be used to make sure that a script does not contain these parts. The list varies depending on the actual target shell: Debian's policy allows some extensions in their scripts (as they are in the dash shell), while a script intending to support pre-POSIX Bourne shells, like autoconf's configure, are even more limited in the features they can use.

Keyboard shortcuts
Bash uses GNU Readline  to provide keyboard shortcuts for command line editing using the default ( Emacs ) key bindings. Vi-bindings can be enabled by running.

Process management (Job control)
The Bash shell has two modes of execution for commands: batch (asynchronous), and concurrent (synchronous).

To execute commands in batch mode (i.e., in sequence) they must be separated by the character ";", or on separate lines:

In this example, when command1 is finished, command2 is executed, and when command2 has completed, command3 will execute.

A background execution of command1 can occur using (symbol &) at the end of an execution command, and process will be executed in background while returning immediately control to the shell and allowing continued execution of commands.

Or to have a concurrent execution of two command1 and command2, they must be executed in the Bash shell in the following way:

In this case command1 is executed in the background & symbol, returning immediately control to the shell that executes command2 in the foreground.

A process can be stopped and control returned to bash by typing Ctrl while the process is running in the foreground.

A list of all processes, both in the background and stopped, can be achieved by running :

In the output, the number in brackets refers to the job id. The plus sign signifies the default process for  and. The text "Running" and "Stopped" refer to the process state. The last string is the command that started the process.

The state of a process can be changed using various commands. The  command brings a process to the foreground, while   sets a stopped process running in the background. and  can take a job id as their first argument, to specify the process to act on. Without one, they use the default process, identified by a plus sign in the output of. The  command can be used to end a process prematurely, by sending it a signal. The job id must be specified after a percent sign:

Conditional execution
Bash supplies "conditional execution" command separators that make execution of a command contingent on the exit code set by a precedent command. For example:

Where ./do_something is only executed if the cd (change directory) command was "successful" (returned an exit status of zero) and the echo command would only be executed if either the cd or the ./do_something command return an "error" (non-zero exit status).

For all commands the exit status is stored in the special variable. Bash also supports if ...;then ...;else ...;fi and case $VARIABLE in $pattern)...;;$other_pattern)...;; esac forms of conditional command evaluation.

Bug reporting
An external command called bashbug reports Bash shell bugs. When the command is invoked, it brings up the user's default editor with a form to fill in. The form is mailed to the Bash maintainers (or optionally to other email addresses).

Programmable completion
Bash supports programmable completion via built-in, compopt, and   commands. The feature has been available since the beta version of 2.04 released in 2000. These commands enable complex and intelligent completion specification for commands (i.e. installed programs), functions, variables, and filenames.

The  and compopt two commands specify how arguments of some available commands or options are going to be listed in the readline input. As of version 5.1 completion of the command or the option is usually activated by the keystroke after typing its name.

Program name
The program's name is a figure of speech or witticism which begins with an homage to Stephen Bourne, the creator of one of the shell programs which have sometimes been considered superseded by the bash shell. His name is used as a pun on the image of childbirth. With that pun, it would seem, is added an allusion: possibly to the Hindu or Buddhist idea of reincarnation; possibly to the Christian idiom known as "being born again;" or quite possibly just to the more abstract idea of renewal. While numerous English translations of the Christian New Testament, Book of John, chapter 3 do contain the words "born again," Merriam-Webster's dictionary has "born-again" defined as a "...person who has made a renewed or confirmed commitment.... " Whatever the original touchstone may have been, in the end the program received the name, "the Bourne Again SHell."

The acronym of that name then is "bash," a word meaning "to strike violently. " In the context of computer programming, to "violently hit something," such as a computer keyboard, could be considered a hyperbolic image of some frustration. Such imagery of negative emotionality could be seen as standing in direct juxtaposition to the idea of becoming "born again."

The naming could be considered an instance of verbal irony or accidental innuendo. Bash grammar was initially based on the grammars of the most popular Unix shell programs then currently in use, some of which were considered particularly difficult to use or frustrating at that time. As the years progressed, bash development has made its grammar more user-friendly,     so much so that it seems likely that the bash project has been committed to improving its usablilty. Since then, bash has become the de facto default shell program in most Linux and Unix operating systems.

Documentation
As the standard upon which bash is based, the POSIX, or IEEE Std 1003.1, et seq, is informative.

The Linux man page is intended to be the authoritative explanatory document for the understanding of how `bash` operates, while the GNU manual is sometimes considered more user-friendly for reading. "You may also find information about Bash by running info bash ... or by looking at,  , or similar directories on your system.  A brief summary is available by running bash --help . "

On modern Linuxes, information on shell built-in commands can be found by executing   or `man builtins` at a terminal prompt where bash is installed. Some commands, such as `echo`, `false`, `kill`, `printf`, `test` or `true`, depending on your system and on your locally installed version of bash, can refer to either a shell built-in or a system binary executable file. When one of these command name collisions occurs, bash will by default execute a given command line using the shell built-in. Specifying a binary executable's absolute path (i.e., `/bin/printf`) is one way of ensuring that the shell uses a system binary. This name collision issue also effects any "help summaries" viewed with `kill --help` and `/bin/kill --help`. Shell built-ins and system binary executable files of the same name often have differing options.

"The project maintainer also has a Bash page which includes Frequently Asked Questions", this FAQ is current as of bash version 5.1 and is no longer updated.

Vulnerabilities
A security hole in Bash dating from version 1.03 (August 1989), dubbed Shellshock, was discovered in early September 2014 and quickly led to a range of attacks across the Internet. Patches to fix the bugs were made available soon after the bugs were identified.

Licensing
Since 4.0: GPL-3.0-or-later

1.11? to 3.2: GPL-2.0-or-later

0.99? to 1.05?: GPL-1.0-or-later

Versions
A version is also available for Windows 10 and Windows 11 via the Windows Subsystem for Linux. It is also the default user shell in Solaris 11. Bash was also the default shell in BeOS, and in versions of Apple macOS from 10.3 (originally, the default shell was tcsh) to 10.15 (macOS Catalina), which changed the default shell to zsh, although Bash remains available as an alternative shell.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Bash (Unix shell)


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Blizzard

A blizzard is a severe snowstorm characterized by strong sustained winds and low visibility, lasting for a prolonged period of time—typically at least three or four hours. A ground blizzard is a weather condition where snow is not falling but loose snow on the ground is lifted and blown by strong winds. Blizzards can have an immense size and usually stretch to hundreds or thousands of kilometres.

Definition and etymology
In the United States, the National Weather Service defines a blizzard as a severe snow storm characterized by strong winds causing blowing snow that results in low visibilities. The difference between a blizzard and a snowstorm is the strength of the wind, not the amount of snow. To be a blizzard, a snow storm must have sustained winds or frequent gusts that are greater than or equal to 56 km/h with blowing or drifting snow which reduces visibility to 400 m or less and must last for a prolonged period of time—typically three hours or more.

Environment Canada defines a blizzard as a storm with wind speeds exceeding 40 km/h accompanied by visibility of 400 m or less, resulting from snowfall, blowing snow, or a combination of the two. These conditions must persist for a period of at least four hours for the storm to be classified as a blizzard, except north of the arctic tree line, where that threshold is raised to six hours. The Australia Bureau of Meteorology describes a blizzard as, "Violent and very cold wind which is laden with snow, some part, at least, of which has been raised from snow covered ground."

While severe cold and large amounts of drifting snow may accompany blizzards, they are not required. Blizzards can bring whiteout conditions, and can paralyze regions for days at a time, particularly where snowfall is unusual or rare.

A severe blizzard has winds over 72 km/h, near zero visibility, and temperatures of -12 C or lower. In Antarctica, blizzards are associated with winds spilling over the edge of the ice plateau at an average velocity of 160 km/h.

Ground blizzard refers to a weather condition where loose snow or ice on the ground is lifted and blown by strong winds. The primary difference between a ground blizzard as opposed to a regular blizzard is that in a ground blizzard no precipitation is produced at the time, but rather all the precipitation is already present in the form of snow or ice at the surface.

The Oxford English Dictionary concludes the term blizzard is likely onomatopoeic, derived from the same sense as blow, blast, blister, and bluster; the first recorded use of it for weather dates to 1829, when it was defined as a "violent blow". It achieved its modern definition by 1859, when it was in use in the western United States. The term became common in the press during the harsh winter of 1880–81.

United States storm systems

In the United States, storm systems powerful enough to cause blizzards usually form when the jet stream dips far to the south, allowing cold, dry polar air from the north to clash with warm, humid air moving up from the south.

When cold, moist air from the Pacific Ocean moves eastward to the Rocky Mountains and the Great Plains, and warmer, moist air moves north from the Gulf of Mexico, all that is needed is a movement of cold polar air moving south to form potential blizzard conditions that may extend from the Texas Panhandle to the Great Lakes and Midwest. A blizzard also may be formed when a cold front and warm front mix together and a blizzard forms at the border line.

Another storm system occurs when a cold core low over the Hudson Bay area in Canada is displaced southward over southeastern Canada, the Great Lakes, and New England. When the rapidly moving cold front collides with warmer air coming north from the Gulf of Mexico, strong surface winds, significant cold air advection, and extensive wintry precipitation occur.

Low pressure systems moving out of the Rocky Mountains onto the Great Plains, a broad expanse of flat land, much of it covered in prairie, steppe and grassland, can cause thunderstorms and rain to the south and heavy snows and strong winds to the north. With few trees or other obstructions to reduce wind and blowing, this part of the country is particularly vulnerable to blizzards with very low temperatures and whiteout conditions. In a true whiteout, there is no visible horizon. People can become lost in their own front yards, when the door is only 10 ft away, and they would have to feel their way back. Motorists have to stop their cars where they are, as the road is impossible to see.

Nor'easter blizzards

A nor'easter is a macro-scale storm that occurs off the New England and Atlantic Canada coastlines. It gets its name from the direction the wind is coming from. The usage of the term in North America comes from the wind associated with many different types of storms, some of which can form in the North Atlantic Ocean and some of which form as far south as the Gulf of Mexico. The term is most often used in the coastal areas of New England and Atlantic Canada. This type of storm has characteristics similar to a hurricane. More specifically, it describes a low-pressure area whose center of rotation is just off the coast and whose leading winds in the left-forward quadrant rotate onto land from the northeast. High storm waves may sink ships at sea and cause coastal flooding and beach erosion. Notable nor'easters include The Great Blizzard of 1888, one of the worst blizzards in U.S. history. It dropped 40 - 50 in of snow and had sustained winds of more than 45 mph that produced snowdrifts in excess of 50 ft. Railroads were shut down and people were confined to their houses for up to a week. It killed 400 people, mostly in New York.

1972 Iran blizzard
The 1972 Iran blizzard, which caused 4,000 reported deaths, was the deadliest blizzard in recorded history. Dropping as much as 26 feet of snow, it completely covered 200 villages. After a snowfall lasting nearly a week, an area the size of Wisconsin was entirely buried in snow.

2008 Afghanistan blizzard
The 2008 Afghanistan blizzard, was a fierce blizzard that struck Afghanistan on 10 January 2008. Temperatures fell to a low of -30 C, with up to 180 cm of snow in the more mountainous regions, killing at least 926 people. It was the third deadliest blizzard in history. The weather also claimed more than 100,000 sheep and goats, and nearly 315,000 cattle died.

The Snow Winter of 1880–1881

The winter of 1880–1881 is widely considered the most severe winter ever known in many parts of the United States.

The initial blizzard in October 1880 brought snowfalls so deep that two-story homes experienced accumulations, as opposed to drifts, up to their second-floor windows. No one was prepared for deep snow so early in the winter. Farmers from North Dakota to Virginia were caught flat with fields unharvested, what grain that had been harvested unmilled, and their suddenly all-important winter stocks of wood fuel only partially collected. By January train service was almost entirely suspended from the region. Railroads hired scores of men to dig out the tracks but as soon as they had finished shoveling a stretch of line a new storm arrived, burying it again.

There were no winter thaws and on February 2, 1881, a second massive blizzard struck that lasted for nine days. In towns the streets were filled with solid drifts to the tops of the buildings and tunneling was necessary to move about. Homes and barns were completely covered, compelling farmers to construct fragile tunnels in order to feed their stock.

When the snow finally melted in late spring of 1881, huge sections of the plains experienced flooding. Massive ice jams clogged the Missouri River, and when they broke the downstream areas were inundated. Most of the town of Yankton, in what is now South Dakota, was washed away when the river overflowed its banks after the thaw.

Novelization
Many children—and their parents—learned of "The Snow Winter" through the children's book The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder, in which the author tells of her family's efforts to survive. The snow arrived in October 1880 and blizzard followed blizzard throughout the winter and into March 1881, leaving many areas snowbound throughout the entire winter. Accurate details in Wilder's novel include the blizzards' frequency and the deep cold, the Chicago and North Western Railway stopping trains until the spring thaw because the snow made the tracks impassable, the near-starvation of the townspeople, and the courage of her future husband Almanzo and another man, Cap Garland, who ventured out on the open prairie in search of a cache of wheat that no one was even sure existed.

The Storm of the Century

The Storm of the Century, also known as the Great Blizzard of 1993, was a large cyclonic storm that formed over the Gulf of Mexico on March 12, 1993, and dissipated in the North Atlantic Ocean on March 15. It is unique for its intensity, massive size and wide-reaching effect. At its height, the storm stretched from Canada towards Central America, but its main impact was on the United States and Cuba. The cyclone moved through the Gulf of Mexico, and then through the Eastern United States before moving into Canada. Areas as far south as northern Alabama and Georgia received a dusting of snow and areas such as Birmingham, Alabama, received up to 12 in with hurricane-force wind gusts and record low barometric pressures. Between Louisiana and Cuba, hurricane-force winds produced high storm surges across northwestern Florida, which along with scattered tornadoes killed dozens of people. In the United States, the storm was responsible for the loss of electric power to over 10 million customers. It is purported to have been directly experienced by nearly 40 percent of the country's population at that time. A total of 310 people, including 10 from Cuba, perished during this storm. The storm cost $6 to $10 billion in damages.

1700 to 1799

 * The Great Snow 1717 series of four snowstorms between February 27 and March 7, 1717. There were reports of about five feet of snow already on the ground when the first of the storms hit. By the end, there were about ten feet of snow and some drifts reaching 25 ft, burying houses entirely. In the colonial era, this storm made travel impossible until the snow simply melted.
 * Blizzard of 1765. March 24, 1765. Affected area from Philadelphia to Massachusetts. High winds and over 2 ft of snowfall recorded in some areas.
 * Blizzard of 1772. "The Washington and Jefferson Snowstorm of 1772". January 26–29, 1772. One of largest D.C. and Virginia area snowstorms ever recorded. Snow accumulations of 3 ft recorded.
 * The "Hessian Storm of 1778". December 26, 1778. Severe blizzard with high winds, heavy snows and bitter cold extending from Pennsylvania to New England. Snow drifts reported to be 15 ft high in Rhode Island. Storm named for stranded Hessian troops in deep snows stationed in Rhode Island during the Revolutionary War.
 * The Great Snow of 1786. December 4–10, 1786. Blizzard conditions and a succession of three harsh snowstorms produced snow depths of 2 ft to 4 ft from Pennsylvania to New England. Reportedly of similar magnitude of 1717 snowstorms.
 * The Long Storm of 1798. November 19–21, 1798. Heavy snowstorm produced snow from Maryland to Maine.

1800 to 1850

 * Blizzard of 1805. January 26–28, 1805. Cyclone brought heavy snowstorm to New York City and New England. Snow fell continuously for two days where over 2 ft of snow accumulated.
 * New York City Blizzard of 1811. December 23–24, 1811. Severe blizzard conditions reported on Long Island, in New York City, and southern New England. Strong winds and tides caused damage to shipping in harbor.
 * Luminous Blizzard of 1817. January 17, 1817. In Massachusetts and Vermont, a severe snowstorm was accompanied by frequent lightning and heavy thunder. St. Elmo's fire reportedly lit up trees, fence posts, house roofs, and even people. John Farrar professor at Harvard, recorded the event in his memoir in 1821.
 * Great Snowstorm of 1821. January 5–7, 1821. Extensive snowstorm and blizzard spread from Virginia to New England.
 * Winter of Deep Snow in 1830. December 29, 1830. Blizzard storm dumped 36 in in Kansas City and 30 in in Illinois. Areas experienced repeated storms thru mid-February 1831.
 * "The Great Snowstorm of 1831" January 14–16, 1831. Produced snowfall over widest geographic area that was only rivaled, or exceeded by, the 1993 Blizzard. Blizzard raged from Georgia, to Ohio Valley, all the way to Maine.
 * "The Big Snow of 1836" January 8–10, 1836. Produced 30 in to 40 in of snowfall in interior New York, northern Pennsylvania, and western New England. Philadelphia got a reported 15 in and New York City 2 ft of snow.

1851 to 1900

 * Plains Blizzard of 1856. December 3–5, 1856. Severe blizzard-like storm raged for three days in Kansas and Iowa. Early pioneers suffered.
 * "The Cold Storm of 1857" January 18–19, 1857. Produced severe blizzard conditions from North Carolina to Maine. Heavy snowfalls reported in east coast cities.
 * Midwest Blizzard of 1864. January 1, 1864. Gale-force winds, driving snow, and low temperatures all struck simultaneously around Chicago, Wisconsin and Minnesota.
 * Plains Blizzard of 1873. January 7, 1873. Severe blizzard struck the Great Plains. Many pioneers from the east were unprepared for the storm and perished in Minnesota and Iowa.
 * Great Plains Easter Blizzard of 1873. April 13, 1873
 * Seattle Blizzard of 1880. January 6, 1880. Seattle area's greatest snowstorm to date. An estimated 4 ft fell around the town. Many barns collapsed and all transportation halted.
 * The Hard Winter of 1880-81. October 15, 1880. A blizzard in eastern South Dakota marked the beginning of this historically difficult season. Laura Ingalls Wilder's book The Long Winter details the effects of this season on early settlers.
 * In the three year winter period from December 1885 to March 1888, the Great Plains and Eastern United States suffered a series of the worst blizzards in this nation's history ending with the Schoolhouse Blizzard and the Great Blizzard of 1888. The massive explosion of the volcano Krakatoa in the South Pacific late in August 1883 is a suspected cause of these huge blizzards during these several years. The clouds of ash it emitted continued to circulate around the world for many years. Weather patterns continued to be chaotic for years, and temperatures did not return to normal until 1888. Record rainfall was experienced in Southern California during July 1883 to June 1884. The Krakatoa eruption injected an unusually large amount of sulfur dioxide (SO2) gas high into the stratosphere which reflects sunlight and helped cool the planet over the next few years until the suspended atmospheric sulfur fell to ground.
 * Plains Blizzard of late 1885. In Kansas, heavy snows of late 1885 had piled drifts 10 ft high.
 * Kansas Blizzard of 1886. First week of January 1886. Reported that 80 percent of the cattle were frozen to death in that state alone from the cold and snow.
 * January 1886 Blizzard. January 9, 1886. Same system as Kansas 1886 Blizzard that traveled eastward.
 * Great Plains Blizzards of late 1886. On November 13, 1886, it reportedly began to snow and did not stop for a month in the Great Plains region.
 * Great Plains Blizzard of 1887. January 9–11, 1887. Reported 72-hour blizzard that covered parts of the Great Plains in more than 16 in of snow. Winds whipped and temperatures dropped to around -50 F. So many cows that were not killed by the cold soon died from starvation. When spring arrived, millions of the animals were dead, with around 90 percent of the open range's cattle rotting where they fell. Those present reported carcasses as far as the eye could see. Dead cattle clogged up rivers and spoiled drinking water. Many ranchers went bankrupt and others simply called it quits and moved back east. The "Great Die-Up" from the blizzard effectively concluded the romantic period of the great Plains cattle drives.
 * Schoolhouse Blizzard of 1888 North American Great Plains. January 12–13, 1888. What made the storm so deadly was the timing (during work and school hours), the suddenness, and the brief spell of warmer weather that preceded it. In addition, the very strong wind fields behind the cold front and the powdery nature of the snow reduced visibilities on the open plains to zero. People ventured from the safety of their homes to do chores, go to town, attend school, or simply enjoy the relative warmth of the day. As a result, thousands of people—including many schoolchildren—got caught in the blizzard.
 * Great Blizzard of March 1888 March 11–14, 1888. One of the most severe recorded blizzards in the history of the United States. On March 12, an unexpected northeaster hit New England and the mid-Atlantic, dropping up to 50 in of snow in the space of three days. New York City experienced its heaviest snowfall recorded to date at that time, all street railcars were stranded, and the storm led to the creation of the NYC subway system. Snowdrifts reached up to the second story of some buildings. Some 400 people died from this blizzard, including many sailors aboard vessels that were beset by gale-force winds and turbulent seas.
 * Great Blizzard of 1899 February 11–14, 1899. An extremely unusual blizzard in that it reached into the far southern states of the US. It hit in February, and the area around Washington, D.C., experienced 51 hours straight of snowfall. The port of New Orleans was totally iced over; revelers participating in the New Orleans Mardi Gras had to wait for the parade routes to be shoveled free of snow. Concurrent with this blizzard was the extremely cold arctic air. Many city and state record low temperatures date back to this event, including all-time records for locations in the Midwest and South. State record lows: Nebraska reached -47 F, Ohio experienced -39 F, Louisiana bottomed out at -16 F, and Florida dipped below zero to -2 F.

1901 to 1939

 * Great Lakes Storm of 1913 November 7–10, 1913. "The White Hurricane" of 1913 was the deadliest and most destructive natural disaster ever to hit the Great Lakes Basin in the Midwestern United States and the Canadian province of Ontario. It produced 90 mph wind gusts, waves over 35 ft high, and whiteout snowsqualls. It killed more than 250 people, destroyed 19 ships, and stranded 19 others.
 * Blizzard of 1918. January 11, 1918. Vast blizzard-like storm moved through Great Lakes and Ohio Valley.
 * 1920 North Dakota blizzard March 15–18, 1920
 * Knickerbocker Storm January 27–28, 1922

1940 to 1949

 * Armistice Day Blizzard of 1940 November 10–12, 1940. Took place in the Midwest region of the United States on Armistice Day. This "Panhandle hook" winter storm cut a 1000 mi through the middle of the country from Kansas to Michigan. The morning of the storm was unseasonably warm but by mid afternoon conditions quickly deteriorated into a raging blizzard that would last into the next day. A total of 145 deaths were blamed on the storm, almost a third of them duck hunters who had taken time off to take advantage of the ideal hunting conditions. Weather forecasters had not predicted the severity of the oncoming storm, and as a result the hunters were not dressed for cold weather. When the storm began many hunters took shelter on small islands in the Mississippi River, and the 50 mph winds and 5 ft waves overcame their encampments. Some became stranded on the islands and then froze to death in the single-digit temperatures that moved in over night. Others tried to make it to shore and drowned.
 * North American blizzard of 1947 December 25–26, 1947. Was a record-breaking snowfall that began on Christmas Day and brought the Northeast United States to a standstill. Central Park in New York City got 26 in of snowfall in 24 hours with deeper snows in suburbs. It was not accompanied by high winds, but the snow fell steadily with drifts reaching 10 ft. Seventy-seven deaths were attributed to the blizzard.
 * The Blizzard of 1949 - The first blizzard started on Sunday, January 2, 1949; it lasted for three days. It was followed by two more months of blizzard after blizzard with high winds and bitter cold. Deep drifts isolated southeast Wyoming, northern Colorado, western South Dakota and western Nebraska, for weeks. Railroad tracks and roads were all drifted in with drifts of 20 ft and more. Hundreds of people that had been traveling on trains were stranded.  Motorists that had set out on January 2 found their way to private farm homes in rural areas and hotels and other buildings in towns; some dwellings were so crowded that there wasn't enough room for all to sleep at once.  It would be weeks before they were plowed out. The Federal government quickly responded with aid, airlifting food and hay for livestock.  The total rescue effort involved numerous volunteers and local agencies plus at least ten major state and federal agencies from the U.S. Army to the National Park Service. Private businesses, including railroad and oil companies, also lent manpower and heavy equipment to the work of plowing out. The official death toll was 76 people and one million livestock.  Youtube video  Storm of the Century - the Blizzard of  '49 Storm of the Century - the Blizzard of '49

1950 to 1959

 * Great Appalachian Storm of November 1950 November 24–30, 1950
 * March 1958 Nor'easter blizzard March 18–21, 1958.
 * The Mount Shasta California Snowstorm of 1959 – The storm dumped 189 in of snow on Mount Shasta. The bulk of the snow fell on unpopulated mountainous areas, barely disrupting the residents of the Mount Shasta area. The amount of snow recorded is the largest snowfall from a single storm in North America.

1960 to 1969

 * March 1960 Nor'easter blizzard March 2–5, 1960
 * December 1960 Nor'easter blizzard December 12–14, 1960. Wind gusts up to 50 mph.
 * March 1962 Nor'easter Great March Storm of 1962 – Ash Wednesday. North Carolina and Virginia blizzards. Struck during Spring high tide season and remained mostly stationary for almost 5 days causing significant damage along eastern coast, Assateague island was under water, and dumped 42 in of snow in Virginia.
 * North American blizzard of 1966 January 27–31, 1966
 * Chicago Blizzard of 1967 January 26–27, 1967
 * February 1969 nor'easter February 8–10, 1969
 * March 1969 Nor'easter blizzard March 9, 1969
 * December 1969 Nor'easter blizzard December 25–28, 1969.

1970 to 1979

 * The Great Storm of 1975 known as the "Super Bowl Blizzard" or "Minnesota's Storm of the Century". January 9–12, 1975. Wind chills of -50 F to -80 F recorded, deep snowfalls.
 * Groundhog Day gale of 1976 February 2, 1976
 * Buffalo Blizzard of 1977 January 28 – February 1, 1977. There were several feet of packed snow already on the ground, and the blizzard brought with it enough snow to reach Buffalo's record for the most snow in one season – 199.4 in.
 * Great Blizzard of 1978 also called the "Cleveland Superbomb". January 25–27, 1978. Was one of the worst snowstorms the Midwest has ever seen. Wind gusts approached 100 mph, causing snowdrifts to reach heights of 25 ft in some areas, making roadways impassable. Storm reached maximum intensity over southern Ontario Canada.
 * Northeastern United States Blizzard of 1978 – February 6–7, 1978. Just one week following the Cleveland Superbomb blizzard, New England was hit with its most severe blizzard in 90 years since 1888.
 * Chicago Blizzard of 1979 January 13–14, 1979

1980 to 1989

 * February 1987 Nor'easter blizzard February 22–24, 1987

1990 to 1999

 * 1991 Halloween blizzard Upper Mid-West US, October 31 – November 3, 1991
 * December 1992 Nor'easter blizzard December 10–12, 1992
 * 1993 Storm of the Century March 12–15, 1993. While the southern and eastern U.S. and Cuba received the brunt of this massive blizzard, the Storm of the Century impacted a wider area than any in recorded history.
 * February 1995 Nor'easter blizzard February 3–6, 1995
 * Blizzard of 1996 January 6–10, 1996
 * April Fool's Day Blizzard March 31 – April 1, 1997. US East Coast
 * 1997 Western Plains winter storms October 24–26, 1997
 * Mid West Blizzard of 1999 January 2–4, 1999

2000 to 2009

 * January 25, 2000 Southeastern United States winter storm January 25, 2000. North Carolina and Virginia
 * December 2000 Nor'easter blizzard December 27–31, 2000
 * North American blizzard of 2003 February 14–19, 2003 (Presidents' Day Storm II)
 * December 2003 Nor'easter blizzard December 6–7, 2003
 * North American blizzard of 2005 January 20–23, 2005
 * North American blizzard of 2006 February 11–13, 2006
 * Early winter 2006 North American storm complex Late November 2006
 * Colorado Holiday Blizzards (2006–07) December 20–29, 2006 Colorado
 * February 2007 North America blizzard February 12–20, 2007
 * January 2008 North American storm complex January, 2008 West Coast US
 * North American blizzard of 2008 March 6–10, 2008
 * 2009 Midwest Blizzard 6–8 December 2009, a bomb cyclogenesis event that also affected parts of Canada
 * North American blizzard of 2009 December 16–20, 2009
 * 2009 North American Christmas blizzard December 22–28, 2009

2010 to 2019

 * February 5–6, 2010 North American blizzard February 5–6, 2010 Referred to at the time as Snowmageddon was a Category 3 ("major") nor'easter and severe weather event.
 * February 9–10, 2010 North American blizzard February 9–10, 2010
 * February 25–27, 2010 North American blizzard February 25–27, 2010
 * October 2010 North American storm complex October 23–28, 2010
 * December 2010 North American blizzard December 26–29, 2010
 * January 31 – February 2, 2011 North American blizzard January 31 – February 2, 2011. Groundhog Day Blizzard of 2011
 * 2011 Halloween nor'easter October 28 – Nov 1, 2011
 * Hurricane Sandy October 29–31, 2012. West Virginia, western North Carolina, and southwest Pennsylvania received heavy snowfall and blizzard conditions from this hurricane
 * November 2012 nor'easter November 7–10, 2012
 * December 17–22, 2012 North American blizzard December 17–22, 2012
 * Late December 2012 North American storm complex December 25–28, 2012
 * February 2013 nor'easter February 7–20, 2013
 * February 2013 Great Plains blizzard February 19 – March 6, 2013
 * March 2013 nor'easter March 6, 2013
 * October 2013 North American storm complex October 3–5, 2013
 * Buffalo, NY blizzard of 2014. Buffalo got over 6 ft of snow during November 18–20, 2014.
 * January 2015 North American blizzard January 26–27, 2015
 * Late December 2015 North American storm complex December 26–27, 2015 Was one of the most notorious blizzards in the state of New Mexico and West Texas ever reported. It had sustained winds of over 30 mph and continuous snow precipitation that lasted over 30 hours. Dozens of vehicles were stranded in small county roads in the areas of Hobbs, Roswell, and Carlsbad New Mexico. Strong sustained winds destroyed various mobile homes.
 * January 2016 United States blizzard January 20–23, 2016
 * February 2016 North American storm complex February 1–8, 2016
 * February 2017 North American blizzard February 6–11, 2017
 * March 2017 North American blizzard March 9–16, 2017
 * Early January 2018 nor’easter January 3–6, 2018
 * March 2019 North American blizzard March 8–16, 2019
 * April 2019 North American blizzard April 10–14, 2019

2020 to present

 * December 5–6, 2020 nor'easter December 5–6, 2020
 * January 31 – February 3, 2021 nor'easter January 31 – February 3, 2021
 * February 13–17, 2021 North American winter storm February 13–17, 2021
 * March 2021 North American blizzard March 11–14, 2021
 * January 2022 North American blizzard January 27–30, 2022
 * Late December 2022 North American winter storm December 21–26, 2022

Canada

 * The Eastern Canadian Blizzard of 1971 – Dumped a foot and a half (45.7 cm) of snow on Montreal and more than 2 ft elsewhere in the region. The blizzard caused the cancellation of a Montreal Canadiens hockey game for the first time since 1918.
 * Saskatchewan blizzard of 2007 – January 10, 2007, Canada

United Kingdom

 * Great Frost of 1709
 * Blizzard of January 1881
 * Winter of 1894–95 in the United Kingdom
 * Winter of 1946–1947 in the United Kingdom
 * Winter of 1962–1963 in the United Kingdom
 * January 1987 Southeast England snowfall
 * Winter of 1990–91 in Western Europe
 * February 2009 Great Britain and Ireland snowfall
 * Winter of 2009–10 in Great Britain and Ireland
 * Winter of 2010–11 in Great Britain and Ireland
 * Early 2012 European cold wave

Other locations

 * 1954 Romanian blizzard
 * 1972 Iran blizzard
 * Winter of 1990–1991 in Western Europe
 * July 2007 Argentine winter storm
 * 2008 Afghanistan blizzard
 * 2008 Chinese winter storms
 * Winter storms of 2009–2010 in East Asia

title: Blizzard


text:
Talk:B (programming language)

Untitled
Is it really NPOV to say that B "probably should have died" but "survived because [some] poor deprived (and depraved) systems didn't have anything better"? I've never used B, but I kind of like typeless languages like FORTH. (I find the Lions book Unix kernel code more readable that much modern C largely because of the aBsence of type annotations in the code.) -- Kragen

- Not completely NPOV :-) But B is a real pain to implement and use on most modern computers. Its whole notion of "address" and "word" just doesn't match modern hardware. (I have "writing a B compiler for 386" on my list of "silly projects to do sometime", so i have given these issues some thought.)

It's neither NPOV nor accurate, based on my four years programming with it on a dual CPU Honeywell 66/60 mainframe in the 1981-85 period, working with the Mollusc CLI. C is definitely better but not that much better. B had all of the core concepts required for systems programming in that environment, though it definitely lacked some C refinements I appreciate. I didn't have any significant character type issues using it with 9 bit bytes and 36 bit machine words. Was certainly way better than doing systems programming in FORTRAN...:) The greater impediment on that system was the line editor, which taught me regular expressions very well but was a real pain to use for editing. The line editor was the best editor available on the system. I've read a rather better history of the evolution of the language and I'll update the article a bit more after doing the necessary research to find it again.JamesDay 20:12, 12 Sep 2003 (UTC)
 * Just did that and added links to the sources. JamesDay 19:25, 25 Oct 2003 (UTC)

When one introduces terms such as "better" or "worse", that is injecting an opinion. And that, by definition, cannot be NPOV. Having used B (a little), C, C++, ... I can say that many of the statements in the article, and also within this "talk" section are simply false. The "history" about the ++ / -- operations are also untrue .. because those are clearly direct derivatives of the DEC PDP instruction set, or at the very least, were inspired by them. That's obvious to anyone who's ever written code for or even looked at an old PDP-7 (or later) programming manual. The PDP-7 was most certainly around when the B language was developed. There's too much wrong with this article to even know where to begin actually. I agree, in its current form it's practically useless for either a novice, or a computer engineer - since it contains so many errors and omissions. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.194.39.86 (talk) 23:31, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

A non-specialist’s complaint
I would so like to comprehend this article. A general encyclopedia is meant to enlighten and explain but I am afraid this is well beyond me. B programming language is not best-known to me. What did BCPL have that is now stripped away to become language B and that Ken Thompson felt he could do without? Is there a lesser-known language that might have equally been of use? What are GCOS that are being run by Honeywell 36 bit mainframes?

These are only a few questions that might be asked by someone uninitiated in the finer arts of computer-speak. You might start like: “B programming language was a transitional phase between BCPL and C. BCPL consisted of …. but was felt to be redundant by … Ken Thompson…. because …”, etc. Who was Ken Thompson, anyway? The article as it stands is next to useless because there are so many things unexplained. Dieter Simon 01:16, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)

"Character data type"?
The article says:

 * The typeless nature of B made sense on the Honeywell, PDP-7 and many older computers, but was a problem on the PDP-11 because it was difficult to elegantly access the character data type that the PDP-11 and most modern computers fully support.

What does the "character data type" refer to? (Just some notion of a single byte type that allows 7-bit ASCII plus extensions to be represented, or something more complex?) I think it would be worth elaborting on what this feature is and why it wasn't convenient to use with B. Neilc 10:32, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

(Not sure if this belongs on the page. Hard-core techies already know, and most others don't care, but here's the answer: here "character data type" just refers to a simple byte type, typically 8 or 9 bits in B implementations, though at least one also supported 6 bit characters. The difficulty arises with addresses. When B words are interpreted as addresses, they are the addresses of words (variously 16, 18, or 36 bits on known implementations). Incrementing an address gives you the address of the following word. This is the same as the hardware addressing scheme on the PDP-7 and Honeywell machines, but different to almost anything modern, where addresses are of bytes. Addresses are very important in B (as in C), for instance they are the only way to do call-by-reference, to refer to dynamically allocated objects etc. So it can be a pain that you can't obtain the address of a byte, especially on a modern machine where the hardware does support that. BTW, the way characters were handled in B was via a pair of library functions char(string, i) which gave as result the i'th character of a string which started at the word address string, and lchar(string, i, ch) which updated i'th character of string to have value ch. )

Source of name "B"?
Dan Gookin claims in "C For Dummies Volume One" (in the antiquitated version that I have) that B stood for Bell Labs. Is that not correct? --86.143.157.188 16:03, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

 * Dennis Ritchie (who worked with Thompson on B) doesn't think so. He claims that it is a contraction of BCPL. -- Derek Ross | Talk 06:53, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Weird stuff in History section.
"Ken Thompson wrote B basing it mainly on the BCPL language he had used to write Unix while in the Multics project." I think we need to lose the "to write Unix". Then the sentence makes sense and is in agreement with B history as remembered by Dennis Ritchie. 198.142.19.55 (talk) 16:13, 6 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree. Dennis Ritchie's  , states that, "While wanting to use a higher-level language, he [Thompson] wrote the original Unix system in PDP-7 assembler." This is not consistent with the information on this page. Therefore I think changing the sentence to, "Ken Thompson wrote B basing it mainly on the BCPL language he had used in the Multics project.", is justifiable. ctype.h 18:09, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion: Participate in the deletion discussion at the. —Community Tech bot (talk) 23:38, 26 July 2019 (UTC)
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title: Talk:B (programming language)


text:
Bikini

A bikini is a two-piece swimsuit primarily worn by girls and women that features one piece on top that covers the breasts, and a second piece on the bottom: the front covering the pelvis but usually exposing the navel, and the back generally covering the intergluteal cleft and some or all of the buttocks. The size of the top and bottom can vary, from bikinis that offer full coverage of the breasts, pelvis, and buttocks, to more revealing designs with a thong or G-string bottom that covers only the mons pubis, but exposes the buttocks, and a top that covers only the areolae. Bikini bottoms covering about half the buttocks may be described as "Brazilian-cut".

The modern bikini swimsuit was introduced by French clothing designer Louis Réard in July 1946, and was named after the Bikini Atoll, where the first public test of a nuclear bomb had taken place four days before.

Due to its revealing design, the bikini was once considered controversial, facing opposition from a number of groups and being accepted only very slowly by the general public. In many countries, the design was banned from beaches and other public places: in 1949, France banned the bikini from being worn on its coastlines; Germany banned the bikini from public swimming pools until the 1970s, and some communist groups condemned the bikini as a "capitalist decadence". The bikini also faced criticism from some feminists, who reviled it as a garment designed to suit men's tastes, and not those of women. Despite this backlash, however, the bikini still sold well throughout the mid to late 20th century.

The bikini gained increased exposure and acceptance as film stars like Brigitte Bardot, Raquel Welch, and Ursula Andress wore it and were photographed on public beaches and seen in film. The minimalist bikini design became common in most Western countries by the mid-1960s as both swimwear and underwear. By the late 20th century, it was widely used as sportswear in beach volleyball and bodybuilding. There are a number of modern stylistic variations of the design used for marketing purposes and as industry classifications, including monokini, microkini, tankini, trikini, pubikini, skirtini, thong, and g-string. A man's single piece brief swimsuit may also be called a bikini or "bikini brief", particularly if it has slimmer sides. Similarly, a variety of men's and women's underwear types are described as bikini underwear. The bikini has gradually gained wide acceptance in Western society. By the early 2000s, bikinis had become a US$811 million business annually, and boosted spin off services such as bikini waxing and sun tanning.

Etymology and terminology
While the two-piece swimsuit as a design existed in classical antiquity, the modern design first attracted public notice in Paris on July 5, 1946.

In May 1946, Parisian fashion designer Jacques Heim released a two-piece swimsuit design that he named the Atome ('Atom') and advertised as "the smallest swimsuit in the world". Like swimsuits of the era, it covered the wearer's belly button, and it failed to attract much attention. French automotive engineer Louis Réard introduced a design he named the "Bikini", adopting the name from the Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean, which was the colonial name the Germans gave to the atoll, borrowed from the Marshallese name for the island, Pikinni. Four days earlier, the United States had initiated its first peacetime nuclear weapons test at Bikini Atoll as part of Operation Crossroads. Unlike the prior Trinity test, or most subsequent nuclear test series, the United States allowed both international observers and the global press to observe Crossroads, creating an intense international interest in the new weapon and its testing. Réard never explained why he chose the name "Bikini" for the swimsuit. Various motivations have been attributed to his choosing of the name, including the idea that he hoped it would create "explosive commercial and cultural reaction" similar to the explosion at Bikini Atoll, that it was meant to be associated with the "exotic allure of the tropical Pacific", from the "comparison of the effects of a scantily clad woman to the atomic bomb," and the idea that Reard's design had out-done Heim's design and "split the atome". Réard's advertising slogan was that the Bikini was "smaller than the smallest bathing suit in the world." The swimsuit's name was typically capitalized for several years after its coining.

It has been frequently cited as a major example of a "psychological link between atomic destruction and sexuality" in popular culture, which includes the stenciling of Rita Hayworth onto one of the bombs detonated at Crossroads, and its persistence in language has been argued as having "trivialized and downplayed the reality of nuclear testing," given the contamination done by especially later US thermonuclear tests at Bikini and other Marshallese atolls.

By making an analogy with words like bilingual and bilateral containing the Latin prefix "bi-" (meaning "two" in Latin), the word bikini was first back-derived as consisting of two parts, [bi + kini] by Rudi Gernreich, who introduced the monokini in 1964. Later swimsuit designs like the tankini and trikini further cemented this derivation. Over time the "–kini family" (as dubbed by author William Safire ), including the "–ini sisters" (as dubbed by designer Anne Cole ), expanded into a variety of swimwear including the monokini (also known as a numokini or unikini), seekini, tankini, camikini, hikini (also hipkini), minikini, face-kini, burkini, and microkini. The Language Report, compiled by lexicographer Susie Dent and published by the Oxford University Press (OUP) in 2003, considers lexicographic inventions like bandeaukini and camkini, two variants of the tankini, important to observe. Although "bikini" was originally a registered trademark of Réard, it has since become genericized.

Variations of the term are used to describe stylistic variations for promotional purposes and industry classifications, including monokini, microkini, tankini, trikini, pubikini, bandeaukini and skirtini. A man's brief swimsuit may also be referred to as a bikini. Similarly, a variety of men's and women's underwear types are described as bikini underwear.

In antiquity

According to archaeologist James Mellaart, a mural from the Chalcolithic era (around 5600 BC) in Çatalhöyük, Anatolia depicts a mother goddess astride two leopards wearing a costume somewhat like a bikini. The two-piece swimsuit can be traced back to the Greco-Roman world, where bikini-like garments worn by women athletes are depicted on urns and paintings dating back to 1400 BC.

In Coronation of the Winner, a mosaic in the floor of a Roman villa in Sicily that dates from the Diocletian period (286–305 AD), young women participate in weightlifting, discus throwing, and running ball games dressed in bikini-like garments (technically bandeaukinis in modern lexicon). The mosaic, found in the Sicilian Villa Romana del Casale, features ten maidens who have been anachronistically dubbed the "Bikini Girls". Other Roman archaeological finds depict the goddess Venus in a similar garment. In Pompeii, depictions of Venus wearing a bikini were discovered in the Casa della Venere,  in the tablinum of the House of Julia Felix, and in an atrium garden of Via Dell'Abbondanza.

Precursors in the West
Swimming or bathing outdoors was discouraged in the Christian West, so there was little demand or need for swimming or bathing costumes until the 18th century. The bathing gown of the 18th century was a loose ankle-length full-sleeve chemise-type gown made of wool or flannel that retained coverage and modesty.

In 1907, Australian swimmer and performer Annette Kellermann was arrested on a Boston beach for wearing form-fitting sleeveless one-piece knitted swimming tights that covered her from neck to toe, a costume she adopted from England, although it became accepted swimsuit attire for women in parts of Europe by 1910. In 1913, designer Carl Jantzen made the first functional two-piece swimwear. Inspired by the introduction of females into Olympic swimming he designed a close-fitting costume with shorts for the bottom and short sleeves for the top.

During the 1920s and 1930s, people began to shift from "taking in the water" to "taking in the sun", at bathhouses and spas, and swimsuit designs shifted from functional considerations to incorporate more decorative features. Rayon was used in the 1920s in the manufacture of tight-fitting swimsuits, but durability issues, especially when wet, proved problematic. Jersey and silk were also sometimes used. By the 1930s, manufacturers had lowered necklines in the back, removed sleeves, and tightened the sides. With the development of new clothing materials, particularly latex and nylon, swimsuits gradually began hugging the body through the 1930s, with shoulder straps that could be lowered for tanning.

Women's swimwear of the 1930s and 1940s incorporated increasing degrees of midriff exposure. The 1932 Hollywood film Three on a Match featured a midriff-baring two-piece bathing suit. Actress Dolores del Río was the first major star to wear a two-piece women's bathing suit onscreen in Flying Down to Rio (1933).

Teen magazines of late 1940s and 1950s featured similar designs of midriff-baring suits and tops. However, midriff fashion was stated as only for beaches and informal events and considered indecent to be worn in public. Hollywood endorsed the new glamor in films like 1949's Neptune's Daughter in which Esther Williams wore provocatively named costumes such as "Double Entendre" and "Honey Child".

Wartime production during World War II required vast amounts of cotton, silk, nylon, wool, leather, and rubber. In 1942, the United States War Production Board issued Regulation L-85, cutting the use of natural fibers in clothing and mandating a 10% reduction in the amount of fabric in women's beachwear. To comply with the regulations, swimsuit manufacturers removed skirt panels and other attachments, while increasing production of the two-piece swimsuit with bare midriffs. At the same time, demand for all swimwear declined as there was not much interest in going to the beach, especially in Europe.

Modern bikini
In the summer of 1946, Western Europeans enjoyed their first war-free summer in many years. French designers sought to deliver fashions that matched the liberated mood of the people. Fabric was still in short supply, and in an endeavor to resurrect swimwear sales, two French designers – Jacques Heim and Louis Réard – almost simultaneously launched new two-piece swimsuit designs in 1946. Heim launched a two-piece swimsuit design in Paris that he called the atome, after the smallest known particle of matter. He announced that it was the "world's smallest bathing suit." Although briefer than the two-piece swimsuits of the 1930s, the bottom of Heim's new two-piece beach costume still covered the wearer's navel.

Soon after, Louis Réard created a competing two-piece swimsuit design, which he called the bikini. He noticed that women at the beach rolled up the edges of their swimsuit bottoms and tops to improve their tan. On 5 July, Réard introduced his design at a swimsuit review held at a popular Paris public pool, Piscine Molitor, four days after the first test of a US nuclear weapon at the Bikini Atoll. The newspapers were full of news about it and Réard hoped for the same with his design. Réard's bikini undercut Heim's atome in its brevity. His design consisted of two side-by-side triangles of fabric forming a bra, and two front-and-back triangular pieces of fabric covering the mons pubis and the buttocks, respectively, connected by string. When he was unable to find a fashion model willing to showcase his revealing design, Réard hired Micheline Bernardini, an 18-year old nude dancer from the Casino de Paris. He announced that his swimsuit, was "smaller than the world's smallest bathing suit". Réard said that "like the [atom] bomb, the bikini is small and devastating". Fashion writer Diana Vreeland described the bikini as the "atom bomb of fashion". Bernardini received 50,000 fan letters, many of them from men.

Photographs of Bernardini and articles about the event were widely carried by the press. The International Herald Tribune alone ran nine stories on the event. French newspaper Le Figaro wrote, "People were craving the simple pleasures of the sea and the sun. For women, wearing a bikini signaled a kind of second liberation. There was really nothing sexual about this. It was instead a celebration of freedom and a return to the joys in life."

Heim's atome was more in keeping with the sense of propriety of the 1940s, but Réard's design won the public's attention. Although Heim's design was the first worn on the beach and initially sold more swimsuits, it was Réard's description of the two-piece swimsuit as a bikini that stuck. As competing designs emerged, he declared in advertisements that a swimsuit could not be a genuine bikini "unless it could be pulled through a wedding ring." Modern bikinis were first made of cotton and jersey.

Social resistance
Despite the garment's initial success in France, women worldwide continued to wear traditional one-piece swimsuits. When his sales stalled, Réard went back to designing and selling orthodox knickers. In 1950, American swimsuit mogul Fred Cole, owner of mass market swimwear firm Cole of California, told Time that he had "little but scorn for France's famed Bikinis." Réard himself would later describe it as a "two-piece bathing suit which reveals everything about a girl except for her mother's maiden name." Fashion magazine Modern Girl Magazine in 1957 stated that "it is hardly necessary to waste words over the so-called bikini since it is inconceivable that any girl with tact and decency would ever wear such a thing".

In 1951, Eric Morley organized the Festival Bikini Contest, a beauty contest and swimwear advertising opportunity at that year's Festival of Britain. The press, welcoming the spectacle, referred to it as Miss World, a name Morley registered as a trademark. The winner was Kiki Håkansson of Sweden, who was crowned in a bikini. After the crowning, Håkansson was condemned by Pope Pius XII, while Spain and Ireland threatened to withdraw from the pageant. In 1952, bikinis were banned from the pageant and replaced by evening gowns. As a result of the controversy, the bikini was explicitly banned from many other beauty pageants worldwide. Although some regarded the bikini and beauty contests as bringing freedom to women, they were opposed by some feminists as well as religious and cultural groups who objected to the degree of exposure of the female body.

Paula Stafford was an Australian fashion designer credited with introducing the bikini to Australia; in a famous incident in 1952, model Ann Ferguson was asked to leave a beach in Surfers Paradise because her Paula Stafford bikini was too revealing. The bikini was banned in Australia, on the French Atlantic coastline, in Spain, in Italy, and in Portugal, and was prohibited or discouraged in a number of US states. The United States Motion Picture Production Code, also known as the Hays Code, enforced from 1934, allowed two-piece gowns but prohibited the display of navels in Hollywood films. The National Legion of Decency, a Roman Catholic body overseeing American media content, also pressured Hollywood and foreign film producers to keep bikinis from being featured in Hollywood movies. As late as 1959 one of the United States' largest swimsuit designers, Anne Cole of the Anne Cole brand, said, "It's nothing more than a G-string. It's at the razor's edge of decency." The Hays Code was abandoned by the mid-1960s, and with it the prohibition of female navel exposure, as well as other restrictions. The influence of the National Legion of Decency also waned by the 1960s.

Rise to popularity
Increasingly common glamour shots of popular actresses and models on either side of the Atlantic played a large part in bringing the bikini into the mainstream. During the 1950s, Hollywood stars such as Ava Gardner, Rita Hayworth, Lana Turner, Elizabeth Taylor, Tina Louise, Marilyn Monroe, Esther Williams, and Betty Grable took advantage of the risqué publicity associated with the bikini by posing for photographs wearing them—pin-ups of Hayworth and Williams in costume were especially widely distributed in the United States. In 1950, Elvira Pagã walked at the Rio Carnival, Brazil in a golden bikini, starting the bikini tradition of the carnival.

In Europe, 17-year-old Brigitte Bardot wore scanty bikinis (by contemporary standards) in the French film Manina, la fille sans voiles ("Manina, the girl unveiled"). The promotion for the film, released in France in March 1953, drew more attention to Bardot's bikinis than to the film itself. By the time the film was released in the United States in 1958, it was re-titled Manina, the Girl in the Bikini. Bardot was also photographed wearing a bikini on the beach during the 1957 Cannes Film Festival. Working with her husband and agent Roger Vadim, she garnered significant attention with photographs of her wearing a bikini on every beach in the south of France.

Similar photographs were taken of Anita Ekberg and Sophia Loren, among others. According to The Guardian, Bardot's photographs in particular turned Saint-Tropez into the beachwear capital of the world, with Bardot identified as the original Cannes bathing beauty. Bardot's photography helped to enhance the public profile of the festival, and Cannes in turn played a crucial role in her career.

Brian Hyland's novelty-song hit "Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini" became a Billboard No. 1 hit during the summer of 1960: the song tells a story about a young girl who is too shy to wear her new bikini on the beach, thinking it too risqué. Playboy first featured a bikini on its cover in 1962; the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue debut two years later featured Babette March in a white bikini on the cover. This has been credited with making the bikini a legitimate piece of clothing.

Ursula Andress, appearing as Honey Ryder in the 1962 British James Bond film, Dr. No, wore a white bikini, which became known as the "Dr. No bikini". It became one of the most famous bikinis of all time and an iconic moment in cinematic and fashion history. Andress said that she owed her career to that white bikini, remarking, "This bikini made me into a success. As a result of starring in Dr. No as the first Bond girl, I was given the freedom to take my pick of future roles and to become financially independent."

The bikini finally caught on, and in 1963, the movie Beach Party, starring Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon, led a wave of films that made the bikini a pop-culture symbol, though Funicello was barred from wearing Réard's bikini unlike the other young females in the films. In 1965, a woman told Time that it was "almost square" not to wear a bikini; the magazine wrote two years later that "65% of the young set had already gone over".

Raquel Welch's fur bikini in One Million Years B.C. (1966) gave the world the most iconic bikini shot of all time and the poster image became an iconic moment in cinema history. Her deer skin bikini in One Million Years B.C., advertised as "mankind's first bikini", (1966) was later described as a "definitive look of the 1960s". Her role wearing the leather bikini made Welch a fashion icon and the photo of her in the bikini became a best-selling pinup poster.

Stretch nylon bikini briefs and bras complemented the adolescent boutique fashions of the 1960s, allowing those to be minimal. DuPont introduced lycra (DuPont's name for spandex) in the same decade. Spandex expanded the range of novelty fabrics available to designers which meant suits could be made to fit like a second skin without heavy linings. "The advent of Lycra allowed more women to wear a bikini," wrote Kelly Killoren Bensimon, a former model and author of The Bikini Book, "It didn't sag, it didn't bag, and it concealed and revealed. It wasn't so much like lingerie anymore." Increased reliance on stretch fabric led to simplified construction. This fabric allowed designers to create the string bikini, and allowed Rudi Gernreich to create the topless monokini. Alternative swimwear fabrics such as velvet, leather, and crocheted squares surfaced in the early '70s.

Mass acceptance
Réard's company folded in 1988, four years after his death. Meanwhile, the bikini had become the most popular beachwear around the globe. According to French fashion historian Olivier Saillard, this was due to "the power of women, and not the power of fashion". By 1988 the bikini made up nearly 20% of swimsuit sales, more than any other model in the US, though one-piece suits made a comeback during the 1980s and early 1990s. In 1997, Miss Maryland Jamie Fox became the first contestant in 50 years to compete in a two-piece swimsuit at the Miss America Pageant. Actresses in action films like Blue Crush (2002) and Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle (2003) made the two-piece "the millennial equivalent of the power suit", according to Gina Bellafonte of The New York Times. According to Beth Dincuff Charleston, research associate at the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, "The bikini represents a social leap involving body consciousness, moral concerns, and sexual attitudes." By the early 2000s, bikinis had become a $811 million business annually, according to the NPD Group, a consumer and retail information company, and had boosted spin-off services like bikini waxing and the sun tanning industries. The first bikini museum in the world is being built in Bad Rappenau in Germany. The development of swimwear from 1880 to the present is presented on 2,000 square metres of exhibition space.

By 2017, the global swimwear market was valued at US$18,5 billion with a compound annual growth rate of 6.2%. Part of the increased consumption of bikinis and swimwears can be attributed to influencers who promote and endorse various brands around the year. Soccer player and best selling author Mo Isom describes it as, "We're flooded with Instagram bikini pics." It was estimated in 2016 that in 2019 the USA would be the largest swimwear market (US$10 billion), followed by Europe (US$5 billion), Asia–Pacific (US$4 billion) and Middle East and Africa (about 1 billion).

Outside the Western world
The 1967 Bollywood film An Evening in Paris is mostly remembered because it featured actress Sharmila Tagore as the first Indian actress to wear a bikini on film. She also posed in a bikini for the glossy Filmfare magazine. The costume shocked a conservative Indian audience, but it also set in motion a trend carried forward by Zeenat Aman in Heera Panna (1973) and Qurbani (1980), Dimple Kapadia in Bobby (1973), and Parveen Babi in Yeh Nazdeekiyan (1982). Indonesian actress Nurnaningsih's bikini clad photos were widely distributed in early 1950s, though she was banned in Kalimantan.

Indian women generally wear bikinis when they vacation abroad or in Goa without the family. But, despite the conservative ideas prevalent in India, bikinis also become more popular in summer when women, from Bollywood stars to the middle class, take up swimming, often in a public space. A lot of tankinis, shorts and single-piece swimsuits are sold in the summer, along with real bikinis and bandeaukinis. The maximum sales for bikinis happen in the winter, the honeymoon season. For more coverage, designers Shivan Bhatiya and Narresh Kukreja invented the bikini-saree popularised by TV anchor Mandira Bedi.

By the end of the first decade of the 21st century, the Chinese bikini industry became a serious international threat for the Brazilian bikini industry. Huludao, Liaoning, China set the world record for the largest bikini parade in 2012, with 1,085 participants and a photo shoot involving 3,090 women. "Beijing Bikini" refers to the Chinese urban practice of men rolling up their shirts to expose their midriff to cool off in public in the summer. In Japan, wearing a bikini is common on the beach and at baths or pools. But, according to a 2013 study, 94% women are not body confident enough to wear a bikini in public without resorting to sarongs, zip-up sweatshirts, T-shirts, or shorts. Japanese women also often wear a "facekini" to protect their face from sunburns.

In most parts of the Middle East, bikinis are either banned or are highly controversial. On March 18, 1973, when Lebanese magazine Ash-Shabaka printed a bikini-clad woman on the cover, they had to make a second version with only the face of the model. In 2011, when Huda Naccache (Miss Earth 2011) posed for the cover of Lilac (based in Israel), she became the first bikini-clad Arab model on the cover of an Arabic magazine. Lebanese-Australian fashion designer Aheda Zanetti created the "burkini" as a modest option to the bikini, which has become very popular among Muslims. Rehab Shaaban, an Egyptian designer, tried an even more abaya-like design, but her design was banned due to safety reasons.

Variants
While the name "bikini" was at first applied only to beachwear that revealed the wearer's navel, today the fashion industry considers any two-piece swimsuit a bikini. Modern bikini fashions are characterized by a simple, brief design: two triangles of fabric that form a bra and cover the woman's breasts and a third that forms a panty cut below the navel that covers the groin and the intergluteal cleft.

Bikinis can and have been made out of almost every possible clothing material, and the fabrics and other materials used to make bikinis are an essential element of their design. Modern bikinis were first made of cotton and jersey, but in the 1960s, Lycra became the common material. Alternative swimwear fabrics such as velvet, leather, and crocheted squares surfaced in the early 1970s.

In a single fashion show in 1985, there were two-piece suits with cropped tank tops instead of the usual skimpy bandeaux, suits that resembled bikinis from the front and one-pieces from the back, suspender straps, ruffles, and deep navel-baring cutouts. Metal and stone jewelry pieces are now often used to dress up look and style according to tastes. To meet the fast pace of demands, some manufacturers now offer made-to-order bikinis ready in as few as seven minutes. The world's most expensive bikini was designed in February 2006 by Susan Rosen; containing 150 carat of diamond, it was valued at £20 million.

Major styles
There is a range of distinct bikini styles available — string/tie-side bikinis, monokinis (topless or top and bottom connected), trikinis (three pieces instead of two), tankinis (tank top, bikini bottom), camikinis (camisole top, bikini bottom), bandeaukinis (bandeau top, bikini bottom), skirtinis (bikini top, skirt bottom), microkinis, sling bikinis (or suspender bikinis), thong and g-string bikinis, and teardrop bikinis.

In sport
Bikinis have become a major component of marketing various women's sports. It is an official uniform for beach volleyball and is widely worn in athletics and other sports. Sports bikinis have gained popularity since the 1990s. However, the trend has raised significant criticism in recent years among people who view it as an attempt to sell sex. Female swimmers do not commonly wear bikinis in competitive swimming. The International Swimming Federation (FINA) voted to prohibit female swimmers from racing in bikinis in its meeting at Rome in 1960.

Beach volleyball

In 1994, the bikini became the official uniform of women's Olympic beach volleyball. In 1999, the International Volleyball Federation (FIVB) standardized beach volleyball uniforms, with the bikini becoming the required uniform for women. That regulation bottom is called a "bun-hugger", and players names are often written on the back of the bottom.

The uniform made its Olympic debut at Bondi Beach, Sydney during the 2000 Summer Olympics amid some criticism. It was the fifth largest television audience of all the sports at the 2000 Games. Much of the interest was because of the sex appeal of bikini-clad players along with their athletic ability. Bikini-clad dancers and cheerleaders entertain the audience during match breaks in many beach volleyball tournaments, including the Olympics. Even indoor volleyball costumes followed suit to become smaller and tighter.

However, the FIVB's mandating of the bikini ran into problems. Some sports officials consider it exploitative and impractical in colder weather. It also drew the ire of some athletes. At the 2006 Asian Games at Doha, Qatar, only one Muslim country – Iraq – fielded a team in the beach volleyball competition because of concerns that the uniform was inappropriate. They refused to wear bikinis. The weather during the evening games in 2012 London Olympics was so cold that the players sometimes had to wear shirts and leggings. Earlier in 2012, FIVB had announced it would allow shorts (maximum length 3 cm above the knee) and sleeved tops at the games. Richard Baker, the federation spokesperson, said that "many of these countries have religious and cultural requirements so the uniform needed to be more flexible".

The bikini remains preferred by most players and corporate sponsors. US women's team has cited several advantages of bikini uniforms, such as comfort while playing on sand during hot weather. Competitors Natalie Cook and Holly McPeak support the bikini as a practical uniform for a sport played on sand during the heat of summer. Olympic gold medal winner Kerry Walsh said, "I love our uniforms." According to fellow gold medalist Misty May-Treanor and Walsh it does not restrict movement.

One feminist viewpoint sees the bikini uniform as objectification of women athletes. US beach volleyball player Gabrielle Reece described the bikini bottoms as uncomfortable with constant "yanking and fiddling." Many female beach volleyball players have sustained injuries by over-training the abdominal muscles while many others have gone through augmentation mammoplasty to look appealing in their uniforms. Australian competitor Nicole Sanderson said about match break entertainment that "it's kind of disrespectful to the female players. I'm sure the male spectators love it, but I find it a little bit offensive."

Sports journalism expert Kimberly Bissell conducted a study on the camera angles used during the 2004 Summer Olympics beach volleyball games. Bissell found that 20% of the camera angles were focused on the women's chests, and 17% on their buttocks. Bissell theorized that the appearance of the players draws fans attention more than their actual athleticism. Sports commentator Jeanne Moos commented, "Beach volleyball has now joined go-go girl dancing as perhaps the only two professions where a bikini is the required uniform." British Olympian Denise Johns argues that the regulation uniform is intended to be "sexy" and to attract attention. Rubén Acosta, president of the FIVB, says that it makes the game more appealing to spectators.

Bodybuilding
From the 1950s to mid-1970s, men's bodybuilding contest formats were often supplemented with women's beauty contests or bikini shows. The winners earned titles like Miss Body Beautiful, Miss Physical Fitness and Miss Americana, and also presented trophies to the winners of the men's contest. In the 1980s, the Ms Olympia competition started in the US and in the UK the NABBA (National Amateur Body Building Association) renamed Miss Bikini International to Ms Universe. In 1986, the Ms Universe competition was divided into two sections – "physique" (for a more muscular physique) and "figure" (traditional feminine presentation in high heels). In November 2010 the IFBBF (International Federation of BodyBuilding & Fitness) introduced a women's bikini contest for women who do not wish to build their muscles to figure competition levels.

Costumes are regulation "posing trunks" (bikini briefs) for both men and women. Female bodybuilders in America are prohibited from wearing thongs or T-back swimsuits in contests filmed for television, though they are allowed to do so by certain fitness organizations in closed events. For men, the dress code specifies "swim trunks only (no shorts, cut-off pants, or Speedos)."

Other sports
Women in athletics often wear bikinis of similar size as those worn in beach volleyball. Amy Acuff, a US high-jumper, wore a black leather bikini instead of a track suit at the 2000 Summer Olympics. Runner Florence Griffith-Joyner mixed bikini bottoms with one-legged tights at the 1988 Summer Olympics, earning her more attention than her record-breaking performance in the women's 200 meters event. In the 2007 South Pacific Games, the rules were adjusted to allow players to wear less revealing shorts and cropped sports tops instead of bikinis. At the 2006 Asian Games, organizers banned bikini-bottoms for female athletes and asked them to wear long shorts.

String bikinis and other revealing clothes are common in surfing, though most surfing bikinis are more robust with more coverage than sunning bikinis. Surfing Magazine printed a pictorial of Kymberly Herrin, Playboy Playmate March 1981, surfing in a revealing bikini, and eventually started an annual bikini issue. The Association of Surfing Professionals often pairs female surf meets with bikini contests, an issue that divides the female pro-surfing community into two parts. It has often been more profitable to win the bikini contest than the female surfing event.

In 2021, the Norway women's national beach handball team was fined €1500 for being improperly dressed after the women wore bike shorts instead of bikini bottoms at a European championship match in Bulgaria. Critics derided the fine and the underlying rule. Norway's minister for culture and sport Abid Raja described the fine as being "completely ridiculous". Former tennis champion Billie Jean King supported the team tweeting "The sexualisation of women athletes must stop". Although the Norwegian Handball Federation announced they would pay the fines, pop singer Pink offered to pay for them. Later, in November 2021, the International Handball Federation changed their dress rules to allow female players to wear some kinds of shorts, specifying "Female athletes must wear short tight pants with a close fit".

Body ideals

In 1950, American swimsuit mogul Fred Cole, owner of Cole of California, told Time that bikinis were designed for "diminutive Gallic women", as because "French girls have short legs... swimsuits have to be hiked up at the sides to make their legs look longer." In 1961, The New York Times reported the opinion that the bikini is permissible for people who are not "too fat or too thin". In the 1960s etiquette writer Emily Post decreed that "[A bikini] is for perfect figures only, and for the very young." In The Bikini Book by Kelly Killoren Bensimon, swimwear designer Norma Kamali says, "Anyone with a tummy" should not wear a bikini. Since then, a number of bikini designers including Malia Mills have encouraged women of all ages and body types to take up the style. The 1970s saw the rise of the lean ideal of female body and figures like Cheryl Tiegs. Her figure remained in vogue in the 21st century.

The fitness boom of the 1980s led to one of the biggest leaps in the evolution of the bikini. According to Mills, "The leg line became superhigh, the front was superlow, and the straps were superthin." Women's magazines used terms like "Bikini Belly", and workout programs were launched to develop a "bikini-worthy body". The tiny "fitness-bikinis" made of lycra were launched to cater to this hardbodied ideal. Movies like Blue Crush and TV reality shows like Surf Girls merged the concepts of bikini models and athletes together, further accentuating the toned body ideal. Motivated by yearly Spring Break festivities that mark the start of the bikini season in North America, many women diet in an attempt to achieve the ideal bikini body; some take this to extremes including self-starvation, leading to eating disorders.

In 1993, Suzy Menkes, then Fashion Editor of the International Herald Tribune, suggested that women had begun to "revolt" against the "body ideal" and bikini "exposure." She wrote, "Significantly, on the beaches as on the streets, some of the youngest and prettiest women (who were once the only ones who dared to bare) seem to have decided that exposure is over." Nevertheless, professional beach volleyball player Gabrielle Reece, who competes in a bikini, claims that "confidence" alone can make a bikini sexy. One survey commissioned by Diet Chef, a UK home delivery service, reported by The Today Show and ridiculed by More magazine, showed that women should stop wearing bikinis by the age of 47.

Bikini underwear
Certain types of underwear are described as bikini underwear and are designed for men and women. For women, bikini or bikini-style underwear is underwear that is similar in size and form to a regular bikini. It can refer to virtually any undergarment that provides less coverage to the midriff than lingerie, panties or knickers, especially suited to clothing such as crop tops. For men, bikini briefs are underpants that resemble women's bikini bottoms, being smaller and more revealing than men's classic briefs. Men's bikini briefs can be low- or high-side that are usually lower than the true waist, often at hips, and usually have no access pouch or flap, nor leg bands at tops of thighs. String bikini briefs have front and rear sections that meet in the crotch but not at the waistband, with no fabric on the side of the legs.

Swimwear and underwear have similar design considerations, both being form-fitting garments. The main difference is that, unlike underwear, swimwear is open to public view. The swimsuit was, and is, following underwear styles, and at about the same time that attitudes towards the bikini began to change, underwear underwent a redesign towards a minimal, unboned design that emphasized comfort first.

History
As the swimsuit was evolving, underwear also started to change. Between 1900 and 1940, swimsuit lengths followed the changes in underwear designs. In the 1920s women started discarding the corset, while the Cadole company of Paris started developing something they called the "breast girdle". During the Great Depression, panties and bras became softly constructed and were made of various elasticized yarns making underwear fit like a second skin. By the 1930s underwear styles for both women and men were influenced by the new brief models of swimwear from Europe. Although the waistband was still above the navel, the leg openings of the panty brief were cut in an arc to rise from the crotch to the hip joint. The brief served as a template for most variations of panties for the rest of the century. Warner standardized the concept of Cup size in 1935. The first underwire bra was developed in 1938. Beginning in the late thirties, skants, a type of skanty men's briefs, were introduced, featuring very high-cut leg openings and a lower rise to the waistband. Howard Hughes designed a push-up bra to be worn by Jane Russell in The Outlaw in 1943, although Russell stated in interviews that she never wore the 'contraption'. In 1950 Maidenform introduced the first official bust enhancing bra.

By the 1960s, the bikini swimsuit influenced panty styles and coincided with the cut of the new lower rise jeans and pants. In the seventies, with the emergence of skintight jeans, thong versions of the panty became mainstream, since the open, stringed back eliminated any tell-tale panty lines across the rear and hips. By the 1980s the design of the French-cut panty pushed the waistband back up to the natural waistline and the rise of the leg openings was nearly as high (French Cut panties come up to the waist, has a high cut leg, and usually are full in the rear ). As with the bra and other type of lingerie, manufacturers of the last quarter of the century marketed panty styles that were designed primarily for their sexual allure. From this decade sexualization and eroticization of the male body was on the rise. The male body was celebrated through advertising campaigns for brands such as Calvin Klein, particularly by photographers Bruce Weber and Herb Ritts. Male bodies and men's undergarments were commodified and packaged for mass consumption, and swimwear and sportswear were influenced by sports photography and fitness. Over time, swimwear evolved from weighty wool to high-tech skin-tight garments, eventually cross-breeding with sportswear, underwear and exercise wear, resulting in the interchangeable fashions of the 1990s.

Men's bikini

The term men's bikini is sometimes used to describe swim briefs. Men's bikinis can have high or low side panels, and string sides or tie sides. Most lack a button or flap front. Unlike swim briefs, bikinis are not designed for drag reduction and generally lack a visible waistband. Suits less than 1.5 inches wide at the hips are less common for sporting purposes and are most often worn for recreation, fashion, and sun tanning. The posing brief standard to bodybuilding competitions is an example of this style. Male punk rock musicians have performed on the stage wearing bikini briefs. The 2000 Bollywood film Hera Pheri shows men sunbathing in bikinis, who were mistakenly believed to be women from a distance.

Male bikini tops also exist and are often used as visual gags. A mankini is a type of sling swimsuit worn by men. The term is inspired by the word bikini. It was popularized by English comedian Sacha Baron Cohen when he donned one for comic effect in the film Borat.

Bikini waxing
Bikini waxing is the epilation of pubic hair beyond the bikini line by use of waxing. The bikini line delineates the part of a woman's pubic area to be covered by the bottom part of a bikini, which means any pubic hair visible beyond the boundaries of a swimsuit. Visible pubic hair is widely culturally disapproved, considered to be embarrassing, and often removed.

As popularity of bikinis grew, the acceptability of pubic hair diminished. But, with certain styles of women's swimwear, pubic hair may become visible around the crotch area of a swimsuit. With the reduction in the size of swimsuits, especially since the advent of the bikini after 1945, the practice of bikini waxing has also become popular. The Brazilian style which became popular with the rise of thong bottoms.

Depending on the style of bikini-bottom and the amount of skin visible outside the bikini, pubic hair may be styled into several styles:  American waxing (removal of pubic hair from the sides, top of the thighs, and under the navel), French waxing (leaving only a vertical strip in front), or Brazilian waxing (removal of all hair in the pelvic area, particularly suitable for thong bottoms).

Bikini tan

The tan lines created by the wearing of a bikini while tanning are known as a bikini tan. These tan lines separate pale breasts, crotch, and buttocks from otherwise tanned skin. Prominent bikini tan lines were popular in the 1990s, and a spa in Brazil started offering perfect bikini tan lines using masking tapes in 2016.

As bikini-style swimsuits leave most of the body exposed to potentially dangerous UV radiation, overexposure can cause sunburn, skin cancer, as well as other acute and chronic health effects on the skin, eyes, and immune system. As a result, medical organizations recommend that bikini wearers protect themselves from UV radiation by using broad-spectrum sunscreen, which has been shown to protect against sunburn, skin cancer, wrinkling and sagging skin.

A 1969 innovation of tan-through swimwear uses fabric which is perforated with thousands of micro holes that are nearly invisible to the naked eye, but which let enough sunlight through to produce a line-free tan.

title: Bikini