view docs/manual/x670.html @ 517:1faf14de9d04

Update manual to correctly reflect forwardrefmax behaviour Add a note to autobranchlength referencing forwardrefmax and also not that forwardrefmax is enabled by default.
author William Astle <lost@l-w.ca>
date Tue, 13 Apr 2021 15:38:12 -0600
parents 52af0aa54fe5
children 8c6c3363e18e
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><H1
CLASS="SECTION"
><A
NAME="AEN670"
>3.10. Assembler Modes and Pragmas</A
></H1
><P
>There are a number of options that affect the way assembly is performed.
Some of these options can only be specified on the command line because
they determine something absolute about the assembly process. These include
such things as the output target. Other things may be switchable during
the assembly process. These are known as pragmas and are, by definition,
not portable between assemblers.</P
><P
>LWASM supports a number of pragmas that affect code generation or
otherwise affect the behaviour of the assembler. These may be specified by
way of a command line option or by assembler directives. The directives
are as follows.</P
><P
></P
><DIV
CLASS="VARIABLELIST"
><DL
><DT
>PRAGMA <CODE
CLASS="PARAMETER"
>pragma[,...]</CODE
></DT
><DD
><P
>Specifies that the assembler should bring into force all <CODE
CLASS="PARAMETER"
>pragma</CODE
>s
specified. Any unrecognized pragma will cause an assembly error. The new
pragmas will take effect immediately. This directive should be used when
the program will assemble incorrectly if the pragma is ignored or not supported.</P
></DD
><DT
>*PRAGMA <CODE
CLASS="PARAMETER"
>pragma[,...]</CODE
></DT
><DD
><P
>This is identical to the PRAGMA directive except no error will occur with
unrecognized or unsupported pragmas. This directive, by virtue of starting
with a comment character, will also be ignored by assemblers that do not
support this directive. Use this variation if the pragma is not required
for correct functioning of the code.</P
></DD
><DT
>*PRAGMAPUSH <CODE
CLASS="PARAMETER"
>pragma[,...]</CODE
></DT
><DD
><P
>This directive saves the current state of the specified pragma(s) for later retrieval. See discussion below for more information.</P
><P
>This directive will not throw any errors for any reason.</P
></DD
><DT
>*PRAGMAPOP <CODE
CLASS="PARAMETER"
>pragma[,...]</CODE
></DT
><DD
><P
>This directive restores the previously saved state of the specified pragma(s). See discussion below for more information.</P
><P
>This directive will not throw any errors for any reason.</P
></DD
></DL
></DIV
><P
>Each pragma supported has a positive version and a negative version. 
The positive version enables the pragma while the negative version disables
it.  The negatitve version is simply the positive version with "no" prefixed
to it.  For instance, "pragma" vs.  "nopragma".  When only one version is
listed below, its opposite can be obtained by prepending "no" if it is not
present or removing "no" from the beginning if it is present.</P
><P
>Pragmas are not case sensitive.</P
><P
></P
><DIV
CLASS="VARIABLELIST"
><DL
><DT
>6800compat</DT
><DD
><P
>When in force, this pragma enables recognition of various
compatibility instructions useful when assembling 6800 code.  These
compatibility instructions are assembled into equivalent 6809 instructions. 
This mode also includes several analogous instructions which are not
strictly 6800 instructions but allow the similar style to be applied to 6809
specific features.</P
><P
>Technically, a compliant 6809 assembler must recognize these
instructions by default since Motorola advertised the 6809 as being source
compatible with the 6800.  However, most source code does not require this
compatibility and LWASM itself did not support these instructions prior to
version 4.11 so this mode is disabled by default.</P
></DD
><DT
>6809</DT
><DD
><P
>This pragma allows you to mark a section of code as 6809-only. In ths mode,
the assembler will throw an error if any 6309 instructions are used.</P
></DD
><DT
>6309</DT
><DD
><P
>This pragma enables the use of 6309 instructions and disables any 6809 specific
instructions. It also changes the cycle count listing output (if selected)
to display 6309 timings.</P
></DD
><DT
>6809conv, 6309conv</DT
><DD
><P
>These pragmas enable convenience instructions extending the 6809 and 6309
instruction sets respectively. For more information, see 
<A
HREF="x817.html"
>Section 3.11</A
>.</P
></DD
><DT
>index0tonone</DT
><DD
><P
>When in force, this pragma enables an optimization affecting indexed addressing
modes. When the offset expression in an indexed mode evaluates to zero but is
not explicity written as 0, this will replace the operand with the equivalent
no offset mode, thus creating slightly faster code. Because of the advantages
of this optimization, it is enabled by default.</P
></DD
><DT
>cescapes</DT
><DD
><P
>This pragma will cause strings in the FCC, FCS, and FCN pseudo operations to
have C-style escape sequences interpreted. The one departure from the official
spec is that unrecognized escape sequences will return either the character
immediately following the backslash or some undefined value. Do not rely
on the behaviour of undefined escape sequences.</P
></DD
><DT
>importundefexport</DT
><DD
><P
>This pragma is only valid for targets that support external references. When
in force, it will cause the EXPORT directive to act as IMPORT if the symbol
to be exported is not defined.  This is provided for compatibility with the
output of gcc6809 and should not be used in hand written code.  Because of
the confusion this pragma can cause, it is disabled by default.</P
></DD
><DT
>undefextern</DT
><DD
><P
>This pragma is only valid for targets that support external references. When in
force, if the assembler sees an undefined symbol on the second pass, it will
automatically define it as an external symbol. This automatic definition will
apply for the remainder of the assembly process, even if the pragma is
subsequently turned off. Because this behaviour would be potentially surprising,
this pragma defaults to off.</P
><P
>The primary use for this pragma is for projects that share a large number of
symbols between source files. In such cases, it is impractical to enumerate
all the external references in every source file. This allows the assembler
and linker to do the heavy lifting while not preventing a particular source
module from defining a local symbol of the same name as an external symbol
if it does not need the external symbol. (This pragma will not cause an
automatic external definition if there is already a locally defined symbol.)</P
><P
>This pragma will often be specified on the command line for large projects.
However, depending on the specific dynamics of the project, it may be sufficient
for one or two files to use this pragma internally.</P
></DD
><DT
>export</DT
><DD
><P
>This pragma causes all symbols to be added to the export list
automatically.  This is useful when a large number of symbols need to be
exported but you do not wish to include an EXPORT directive for all of them. 
This is often useful on the command line but might be useful even inline
with the PRAGMA directive if a large number of symbols in a row are to be
exported.</P
></DD
><DT
>dollarlocal</DT
><DD
><P
>When set, a "$" in a symbol makes it local. When not set, "$" does not
cause a symbol to be local.  It is set by default except when using the OS9
target.</P
></DD
><DT
>dollarnotlocal</DT
><DD
><P
> This is the same as the "dollarlocal" pragma except its sense is
reversed.  That is, "dollarlocal" and "nodollarnotlocal" are equivalent and
"nodollarlocal" and "dollarnotlocal" are equivalent.  </P
></DD
><DT
>pcaspcr</DT
><DD
><P
> Normally, LWASM makes a distinction between PC and PCR in program
counter relative addressing. In particular, the use of PC means an absolute
offset from PC while PCR causes the assembler to calculate the offset to the
specified operand and use that as the offset from PC. By setting this
pragma, you can have PC treated the same as PCR. </P
></DD
><DT
>shadow</DT
><DD
><P
>When this pragma is in effect, it becomes possible to define a macro
that matches an internal operation code. Thus, it makes it possible to
redefine either CPU instructions or pseudo operations. Because this feature
is of dubious utility, it is disabled by default.</P
></DD
><DT
>nolist</DT
><DD
><P
>Lines where this pragma is in effect will not appear in the assembly
listing.  Also, any symbols defined under this pragma will not show up in
the symbol list.  This is most useful in include files to avoid spamming the
assembly listing with dozens, hundreds, or thousands of irrelevant
symbols.</P
></DD
><DT
>autobranchlength</DT
><DD
><P
>One of the perennial annoyances for 6809 programmers is that the
mneumonics for the short and long branch instructions are different (bxx vs. 
lbxx), which is at odds with the rest of the instruction set.  This pragma
is a solution to those annoying byte overflow errors that short branch
instructions tend to aquire.</P
><P
>When this pragma is in effect, which is not the default, whenever any
relative branch instruction is used, its size will be automatically
determined based on the actual distance to the destination.  In other words,
one can write code with long or short branches everywhere and the assembler
will choose a size for the branch.</P
><P
>Also, while this pragma is in effect, the &#62; and &#60; symbols can be used
to force the branch size, analogous to their use for other instructions with
&#60; forcing 8 bit offsets and &#62; forcing 16 bit offets.</P
><P
>Because this pragma leads to source that is incompatible with other
assemblers, it is strongly recommended that it be invoked using the PRAGMA
directive within the source code rather than on the command line or via the
*PRAGMA directive.  This way, an error will be raised if someone tries to
assemble the code under a different assembler.</P
><P
>Note that if the "forwardrefmax" pragma is ineffect, as is the current
default, this pragma will not behave as expected.</P
></DD
><DT
>nosymbolcase, symbolnocase</DT
><DD
><P
>Any symbol defined while this pragma is in force will be treated as
case insensitive, regardless whether the pragma is in force when the symbol
is referenced.</P
><P
>It is important to note that this pragma will not work as expected in
all cases when using the object file assembly target.  It is intended for
use only when the assembler will be producing the final binary.</P
></DD
><DT
>condundefzero</DT
><DD
><P
>This pragma will cause the assembler to change the way it handles
symbols in conditional expressions.  Ordinarily, any symbol that is not
defined prior to the conditional will throw an undefined symbol error.  With
this pragma in effect, symbols that are not yet defined at the point the
conditional is encountered will be treated as zero.</P
><P
>This is not the default because it encourages poor code design. One
should use the "IFDEF" or "IFNDEF" conditionals to test for the presence of
a symbol.</P
><P
>It is important to note that if a symbol is defined but it does not
yet evaluate to a constant value at the point where the conditional appears,
the assembler will still complain about a non constant condition.</P
></DD
><DT
>forwardrefmax</DT
><DD
><P
>This pragma will disable forward reference optimization completely.
However, many source files, especially
those not using the PCR relative addressing modes, this optimization is
pointless since the assembler will almost certainly settle on a 16 bit
offset or address.  If all variables in the direct page are defined before
the main body of the code, the benefit of forward reference optimization
almost certainly vanishes completely.  However, the cost of doing that
optimization remains and can result in a very long assembly time. Because
of this, "forwardrefmax" has been the default setting since version 4.14 of
LWTOOLS. To turn it off, use "noforwardrefmax".</P
><P
>Enabling this pragma will cause all forward references to use the
maximum offset or address size, much the same has EDTASM and other pure
two pass assemblers do. The side effect is that all line lengths and
symbol values are fully resolved after the initial parsing pass and the
amount of work to resolve everything becomes almost nil.</P
><P
>While this pragma can be applied selectively to sections of source
code (use *PRAGMA if doing so and compatibility with other assemblers
is desired), it is likely more useful when provided as a command line
pragma.</P
><P
>It should be noted that the presence or absence of this pragma
will not change the correctness of the generated code unless cycle counts
or byte counts are critical (which they usually are not). It also will
not override the operand size override prefixes (&lt; and &gt;). It only
applies when the assembler is left to guess what the operand size is.</P
></DD
><DT
>operandsizewarning</DT
><DD
><P
>Enabling this pragma will cause LWASM to show a warning when it
detects that a smaller addressing mode could be used for an instruction.
This is particularly useful for finding places where long branches are used
where short branches could be used instead. It will also show the warnings
for indexing offsets (regardless of whether the operand size is
forced).</P
><P
>As of LWASM 4.16, no other checks are performed.</P
></DD
><DT
>qrts</DT
><DD
><P
>&#13;Enables the use of the ?RTS branch target. ?RTS is implemented to maintain
compatibility with the MACRO-80c assembler.  It works by searching backward
in the code for an RTS instruction.  If none is found, it inverts the branch
logic and inserts an RTS following the branch instruction.  Below you can
see how a BMI (2B xx) has been assembled as a BPL *+1 (2A 01) to skip over an
inserted RTS (39).</P
><PRE
CLASS="PROGRAMLISTING"
>1D1E 7D1D1D            TST   WHICH1
1D21 2A0139            BMI   ?RTS
1D24 BD1D65            JSR   INV</PRE
></DD
><DT
>m80ext</DT
><DD
><P
>&#13;This pragma (along with pragma qrts) enables some uncommon behaviors to
accomodate The Micro Works MACRO-80c assembler from 1982.  This assembler
was used by a number of notable TRS-80 Color Computer applications and the
goal of this pragma is to allow them to build identical binaries from
unmodified, vintage source code.</P
><P
>&#13;In m80ext mode, the handling of the "END" pseudo-op changes when used inside
an include file.  Instead of terminating all assembly, it merely stops
processing of the current include file (this behavior matches the original
Motorola 6809 assembler).  In addition, loading an ASCII value with a single
quote (e.g., LDA #'N) is extended to 16-bit registers (e.g., LDD #'NO). 
LWASM normally supports this via double quote and that is the proper use in
modern code.  Finally, the FCC pseudo-op is extended to handle FCB-like
behavior after the closing delimiter:</P
><PRE
CLASS="PROGRAMLISTING"
>                       FCC "Greetings from 1982",13,0</PRE
></DD
><DT
>testmode</DT
><DD
><P
>&#13;This pragma is intended for internal testing purposes. In testmode, the
assembler searches for a specially-formatted comment starting with a
semicolon followed by a period.  Immediately afterward are a list of hex
bytes that the assembler is expected to generate.  Likewise, if the
assembler is expected to throw an error or warning on a given line, you can
check by specifying "E:" followed by the error number.  In this case the
error is ignored and the assembler continues ignoring the line in question.&#13;</P
><PRE
CLASS="PROGRAMLISTING"
>1D1E 7D1D1D            TST   WHICH1    ;.7d1d1d
1D21 2A0139            BMI   ?RTS      ;.2a0139
1D24 1D24              FDB   *         ;.1d24
1D26                   xyz   INV       ;.E:32    (Error 32 is "Bad opcode")</PRE
></DD
><DT
>emuext</DT
><DD
><P
>&#13;This pragma enables two instructions useful when running code in compatible
emulators. Break breaks into the debugger. Log writes printf-style
output to the debug window&#13;</P
><PRE
CLASS="PROGRAMLISTING"
>      LOG           ; log output
      FDB   FSTR    ; pointer to format string
      FDB   PX1     ; 16 bit pointer to 16 bit value
      FDB   PY1     ; 16 bit pointer to 8 bit value (see format string!)
      FDB   PX2     ; 16 bit pointer to 16 bit value
      FDB   PY2     ; 16 bit pointer to 8 bit value
      ; execution continues here ...
      RTS

; format string
FSTR  FCC   "%hu,%hhu - %hu,%hhu"
      FCB   10,0</PRE
></DD
></DL
></DIV
><P
>As a convenience, each input file has a pragma state stack. This
allows, through the use of *PRAGMAPUSH and *PRAGMAPOP, a file to change a
pragma state and then restore it to the precise state it had previously. 
If, at the end of an input file, all pragma states have not been popped,
they will be removed from the stack.  Thus, it is critical to employ
*PRAGMAPOP correctly. Because each input file has its own pragma stack,
using *PRAGMAPUSH in one file and *PRAGMAPOP in another file will not
work.</P
><P
>Pragma stacks are more useful in include files, in particular in
conjunction with the nolist pragma.  One can push the state of the nolist
pragma, engage the nolist pragma, and then pop the state of the nolist
pragma at the end of the include file.  This will cause the entire include
file to operate under the nolist pragma.  However, if the file is included
while nolist is already engaged, it will not undo that state.</P
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