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From: weiss@theory.lcs.mit.edu (Paul G. Weiss)
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.programmer
Subject: Microsoft Assembler Complaints
Message-ID: <WEISS.90Nov19164930@toucan.lcs.mit.edu>
Date: 19 Nov 90 22:49:30 GMT
Sender: daemon@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu (Lucifer Maleficius)
Distribution: comp
Organization: MIT Lab for Computer Science
Lines: 39

Here are two things that I don't like about the Microsoft Assembler.  If
someone from M-Soft is listening can you tell me if the latest version
fixes these problems.

First of all, the version that I am using is 5.10A.

Problem #1: High level language support
---------------------------------------
When using the .MODEL directive which provides high level language
support, e.g.
	.MODEL SMALL,PASCAL
all procedures are declared public.  As far as I know there is no
way to inform the assembler that you do not want certain procedures
to be made public.  This is a real problem if you are going to be
distributing libraries, as it causes many symbols to be included
in the library index that otherwise would be hidden.

Problem #2: .CODE directive
---------------------------------------
When you specify
	.MODEL MEDIUM
or 
	.MODEL LARGE
you can then give the .CODE directive a name, e.g.
	.CODE FOO_TEXT
This will translate into
	FOO_TEXT SEGMENT WORD PUBLIC 'CODE'
Unfortunately, if your filename is BAR.ASM, then your
object file will also contain a definition of the
following segment:
	BAR_TEXT SEGMENT WORD PUBLIC 'CODE'
Even if you do not place any data in this segment.
Again, for those of us who distribute libraries this
results in lots of null segments being placed in the
library, making our libraries larger and confusing
people who read link maps after linking with the library.

Thanks for listening.
-Paul Weiss