Are static variables (both local to a function and local to a source file (or "compilation unit")) also stored in the BSS section? From what I understand about C, they should be.

If they're not explicitly initialized, they will be in the BSS section.
If they're explicitly initialized and not const, they will be in the .data section (-> RAM).
If they're explicitly initialized and const, they will be in the .rodata section (-> Flash).

Also (this is off-topic) can anyone really edit someone else's post? I see an "editer" link on every post, and clicking on one gives me a page to edit the post. I haven't actually submitted any changes to anyone's post (I'm a nice guy ) so I don't know if it would let me submit changes.

Nope, it wouldn't let you submit changes, since you don't have moderator power
(On this section of yAronet, Folco, PpHd and myself have a green "+" signaling local moderator status, and Godzil has a green "@" signaling local admin status. The global admins have a red "@"; yAro has the blue "@" signaling "owner" privileges. Boo also has a blue "@", but it's a bot signaling the number of connected people, alerting people by private messages upon a ! call, starting forked topics, etc.)


Since you have an ancient computer, adding an actual tree implementation to the ld-tigcc-optimization branch would speed up linking quite a lot for you.
We were considering red-black trees, since they stay quite well balanced (height is <= 2 * optimal height given by an AVL tree) at a limited computational cost. There's a GPL'ed implementation of rbtrees in Linux, and I found some auxiliary functions building on the Linux implementation through Koders.com.
We'll help you with testing, if not more.