[comp.sys.nsc.32k] The great assembler syntax debate.

ian@sibyl.eleceng.ua.oz.au (05/09/90)

I invited discussion sometime ago on assembler syntax. There is no
really clear concensus except that most people seem to agree with me
that the original gas syntax sux.

The only question is whether to adopt the NS SysV syntax. A couple of
people suggested this but there was no concensus and so the simplest
thing is to leave it like it is.  Also the current syntax is
compatable with Bruce Culbertson's assembler.

The gas uses '|' as a "line comment" character. This is silly as it
means you can't have expressions with logical "or" in them. Since
there is no longer any need for a '#' character to mean "immediate
mode", '#' can be used as the comment character everywhere. These
changes are trivial and I haven't updated the gas patches as I am
waiting until I have perfected(*) a shell/sed script to convert Bruce's
assembler syntax to gas assembler syntax.

Whilst, gas has compatable opcodes and addressing mode syntax to
Bruce's assembler, thhe comment character is different and the pseudo
ops need some work.

Ian Dall

* Possibly not doable with sed when you take things like the
  possibility of comment characters within strings. It seems to be
  pretty good in practice though.