Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!botter!star.cs.vu.nl!ast
From: ast@cs.vu.nl (Andy Tanenbaum)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Re: asld question
Message-ID: <835@ast.cs.vu.nl>
Date: 4 Jul 88 14:53:03 GMT
References: <6263@bcsaic.UUCP>
Reply-To: ast@cs.vu.nl (Andy Tanenbaum)
Organization: VU Informatica, Amsterdam
Lines: 18

In article <6263@bcsaic.UUCP> paula@bcsaic.UUCP (Paul Allen) writes:
>I'm trying to build a kernel that has Eric Roskos' generic BIOS disk
>driver in it.  Part of that process is to convert his MASM version of
>klib88.asm back into something that asld can grok.  I'm having trouble
>figuring out when to use '*' and when to use '#' in front of tokens.

In theory, * means 1 byte and # means two bytes.  This is PC-IX syntax.
Of course, the assembler can see very well how big the number is and doesn't
need the user to tell it whether it fits in 8 bits or not.  Thus it ignores
the difference between * and # ands uses 1 byte when the number fits in
one byte, and two bytes otherwise.  I don't know why PC-IX has two ways to
express constants when the assembler can obviously figure it out itself
except to mention that unlike Xenix, PC-IX is a genuine, official, IBM
product, sold in genuine, official IBM stores (back when they had such
things).

-- 
Andy Tanenbaum (ast@cs.vu.nl)