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From: c164-bd@katerina.uucp (John D. Mitchell)
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.programmer
Subject: Re: Microsoft Assembler Complaints
Message-ID: <9385@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 1 Dec 90 11:33:40 GMT
References: <9078@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU> <1990Nov20.141330.13358@polyof.poly.edu> <9109@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU> <59413@microsoft.UUCP>
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Reply-To: c164-bd@katerina.UUCP (John D. Mitchell)
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In article <59413@microsoft.UUCP> steveha@microsoft.UUCP (Steve Hastings) writes:
>_PC Week_ magazine, 19 Nov 90 issue, page 4, in an article called
>"Microsoft to Beef Up Macro Assembler Compiler," says that MASM 6.0 is in
>beta test.  They said it is integrated with Programmer's WorkBench 1.1, is
>faster, is a one-pass assembler (no more NOP holes), and has support for
>high-level-ish constructs like "if-then-else" and loops.
>
>I have never laid eyes on this product, so I cannot verify any of this.

What do you (they) mean 'one-pass assembler (no more NOP holes)'?  In
a true single pass assembler you can't know how far ahead the target
of a jump/call/branch is, so how can you produce the correct code?
They might be doing some kind of back-patching but that would seem to
mean that it's no longer a one-pass assembler.  Both SLR's OPTASM and
Borland's TASM are very fast and they use a multi-pass system.

Also, I lean towards the school of thought that says "if you need help
to do simple things like looping and if-then-else's then what the
hell are you doing using assembly-language?!"

I would tend to trust such sneak preview articles with suspicion
(which you did).  I have heard a few discussions about questionable
marketing practices (ethically speaking, nothing per se about M-soft)
where information is purposefully 'leaked' about performance/features/etc.
that the actual product doesn't/won't have.  I'll believe it when I
rake it over the coals a few times :-).

Oh yeah, any word about whether they are finally going to write the
assembler in assembly language (instead of C)?

-----	John D. Mitchell
	johnm@cory.Berkeley.EDU