Automatic ASM to ! Conversion
Posted: Wed Apr 21, 2004 8:02 pm
It would be nice if PB either automatically recognizes when inline ASM code appears in the source code, or if you have activated the Inline ASM Support, that it provide a feature for adding a leading ! to any ASM statements that appear without it when the loaded/saved.
When I learned Jovial (an arcane programming language of the 1960's), it had two commands related to this issue. One was DIRECT, which meant that the following commands were understood to be in ASM. The other was JOVIAL, which meant a return to the Jovial syntax. It also had a command of COBOL, meaning that it activated a COBOL Compiler at that point. Again, the JOVIAL command would take you back to the Jovial environment. I never used the latter, and never researched the question of whether there was also a FORTRAN directive. Likely so.
This interaction proved to be useful, and the directives also helped the programmer to identify where a specific syntax was being employed -- also serving to ensure that the correct compiler was being envoked in the right places in case there was some overlap in language instructions.
Just some side throughts related to making ASM statements compile without having to manually set the Compiler's Enable Inline ASM Support flag for the current program.
Related, would be the notion of having Directives that would automatically be included in the source code, or added to the source code, to direct the compiler as to the options needed for that particular program. Such as:
ENABLE ASM
ENABLE ONERROR
ENABLE XP SKIN
ENABLE NT 4.0
The counter instruction would be DISABLE
When I learned Jovial (an arcane programming language of the 1960's), it had two commands related to this issue. One was DIRECT, which meant that the following commands were understood to be in ASM. The other was JOVIAL, which meant a return to the Jovial syntax. It also had a command of COBOL, meaning that it activated a COBOL Compiler at that point. Again, the JOVIAL command would take you back to the Jovial environment. I never used the latter, and never researched the question of whether there was also a FORTRAN directive. Likely so.
This interaction proved to be useful, and the directives also helped the programmer to identify where a specific syntax was being employed -- also serving to ensure that the correct compiler was being envoked in the right places in case there was some overlap in language instructions.
Just some side throughts related to making ASM statements compile without having to manually set the Compiler's Enable Inline ASM Support flag for the current program.
Related, would be the notion of having Directives that would automatically be included in the source code, or added to the source code, to direct the compiler as to the options needed for that particular program. Such as:
ENABLE ASM
ENABLE ONERROR
ENABLE XP SKIN
ENABLE NT 4.0
The counter instruction would be DISABLE