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From: andy@batcomputer.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re:  Teaching Assembler (now m4/cpp)
Message-ID: <1072@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu>
Date: Wed, 20-May-87 09:45:43 EDT
Article-I.D.: batcompu.1072
Posted: Wed May 20 09:45:43 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 23-May-87 01:29:18 EDT
References: <7447@brl-adm.ARPA>
Reply-To: andy@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu.UUCP (Andy Pfiffer)
Organization: Cornell Theory Center, Cornell University, Ithaca NY
Lines: 32

In article <7447@brl-adm.ARPA> chris@mimsy.umd.EDU (Chris Torek) writes:
>m4 is just about maximally untailored.
>...
>...All I want from an assembler is that it assemble, quickly, and that it
>tell me where something is wrong.  There is so little to go wrong
>that it does not matter *what*: just *where*.

Absolutely.  While I did pay my dues with a PDP-11 macro assembler under
RT-11, I've found m4/cpp to be more than enough to get the job done.

The project that I am currently involved in is based upon the INMOS
transputer (T414 to be exact).  Our board-level monitor is a classicly
implemented threaded interpreter (forth-like for the uninformed) written
entirely in native T4 assembler.  After a weekend of playing with m4, I
put together an m4 macro package that does some gee-whiz things at assemble
time.

By default, our assembler front end runs the source through any specified
macro files (*.m4), then through cpp, and then finally assembles it.  I could
have gotten by, I think, with just cpp if our assembler understood
semicolon separated statements.

I suppose that I shouldn't tell you that the current version of the assembler
backend (linker, symbolic address binder, etc.) are *all* written in
awk and m4...


-- 
Andy Pfiffer					andy@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu
Cornell Theory Center / Cornell U.		cornell!batcomputer!andy
Home of the first usable T-Series		(607) 255-8686
"...that's the way a Transputer works, right?"  Systems Group