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From: oldCoder <tinstaafl AT attbi DOT com>
Organization: Programming and Network Administration
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Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.djgpp
Subject: Re: djasm: size of immediate unknown error message
References: <1024181369 DOT 484336 AT queeg DOT ludd DOT luth DOT se>
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Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2002 06:31:10 GMT
To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
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Reply-To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com

If I'm not mistaken (and I very easily could be), djasm, like gas, uses 
the AT&T syntax, and an intrinsic part of that syntax is appending the 
data type onto the mnemonic.  My guess is that the maintainers of both 
programs overlooked error messages pertaining to data type because it's 
such a basic part of the syntax.  I'm no assembler expert, by the way; 
the last time I wrote serious assembly was on the Z80 and the PDP-11. 
What _hasn't_ changed is that error messages don't tell you much about 
your error.  I think it's because of Murphy's Law.

					-Phil

Martin Str|mberg wrote:

> Consider this very simplistic asm program:
> 
>         .org 0x100
> start:
>         mov [var], 0
> 
>         ret
> 
> var:
>         .dw 0
> 
> and the assembling:
> 
> nietzsche:~/djgpp> lfn.1/djasm djasm.error_message.1.asm djasm.error_message.1.com djasm.error_message.1.map
> djasm.error_message.1.asm:3: parse error, expecting `REG8' or `REG16' or `REG32' or `SREG'
> djasm.error_message.1.asm:3: Last token was `0' (NUMBER)
> djasm.error_message.1.asm: 1 errors
> 
> The error is because djasm doesn't know the size of var. If I use
> "movb", movw" or movd" instead of "mov" all is fine.
> 
> Now, this error message is pretty hard to understand, until you are
> aware of djasm particularities. 
> 
> How hard would it be to improve it to say ``Size of destination of
> immediate value is unknown. Use "movb", "movw" or "movd" to specify
> size of value''?
> 
> 
> Right,
> 
> 						MartinS
>