Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!philmds!leo
From: leo@philmds.UUCP (Leo de Wit)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: Assembler
Message-ID: <545@philmds.UUCP>
Date: 2 Jul 88 12:01:50 GMT
References: <1946@netmbx.UUCP> <431@sp7040.UUCP>
Reply-To: leo@philmds.UUCP (L.J.M. de Wit)
Organization: Philips I&E DTS Eindhoven
Lines: 32

In article <431@sp7040.UUCP> jsp@sp7040.UUCP (John Peters) writes:
>In article <1946@netmbx.UUCP>, fischer@netmbx.UUCP (Axel Fischer) writes:
>> Recently I looked for a good assembler package for the Atari ST but I couldn't
>> deceide which one I should buy.
>> 
>> Could any please give me some advise and maybe a little comparision what they
>> perform and cost ?
>> 
>
>	I would like to make a request for some information about the
>assembler that is included with the MWC package.  I use MWC alot and would
>like to try some assembly.  Is this much like the UNIX assembler.  Is there
>a macro package like M4 available for it.  

For the degree in which I need assembly the assembler that comes with the
GST-C compiler (anyone use that??!?) is quite satisfactory. It should be
possible to use macro's and the like with this assembler, but I have the
feeling that this somehow has been disabled (found those assembler
directives doing 'strings' on the program). I suppose because they (GST)
sell the macro assembler also as a separate product (b.t.w. has anyone
managed to 're-enable' macro's or is this not possible?).
As for a macro package, most decent assemblers have their own macro
handling stuff but M4 is a preprocessor, so if you want that
functionality, you could write your own preprocessor to handle stuff
(this is much easier than writing a general preprocessor which must be
aware of C syntax, quoting etc).

If you plan to buy a C compiler to have also an assembler, I wouldn't
recommend GST-C. When I bought it two years ago, it couldn't handle
floats and had only a poor subset of what a decent compiler should have.

        Leo.