CHAPTER 3   OPERATION AND REQUIREMENTS


Creating Programs to Assemble

Before you invoke A86 you must have an assembly-language source
program to assemble.  A source program is an ASCII text file,
created with the text editor of your choice.  The editor must
produce a file that is free of internal records known only to the
editor.  Some of the fancier word processors will require you to
use a "plain text" mode to insure that the file is free of such
records.

This manual will fully explain to you the correct syntax of an
A86 program, but it is not intended to teach you about the
86-family instruction set, or about assembly-language interfacing
to your computer or your operating system.

The instruction set charts in Chapters 6 and 7 give concise,
one-line descriptions of each instruction, but they don't go into
any detail about instruction usage.  For such detail, I recommend
either one of the two books The 8086/8088 Primer by Stephen P.
Morse, or The 80286 Architecture by Morse and Albert.  The latter
book covers the 8087/287 and is recommended if you have a
floating-point coprocessor, or if you wish to explore the
expanded capabilities of the 286.  (My 386 book is the latest in
a series in which those two books are predecessors.)

To learn how to make system calls to input from keyboard or disk,
output to screen, printer or disk, etc., you need a book that
covers the MS-DOS operating system and the BIOS for the IBM-PC,
or whatever computer you have if it's non-IBM-BIOS-compatible (if
you don't know whether or not it's compatible, it probably is).
I used Peter Norton's Programmer's Guide to the IBM-PC.  If
you're less familiar with assembly language, you will probably
want his Assembly Language Guide to the IBM-PC instead.


Program Invocation

To invoke A86, you must provide a program invocation line, either
typed to the console when the DOS command prompt appears, or
included in a batch file.  The program invocation line consists
of the following:

1. The program name A86.

2. The names of the source files you want to assemble.  You may
   use the wild card delimiters * and ? if you wish, to denote a
   group of source files to be assembled.  A86 will sort all
   matching names into alphabetical order for each wild card
   specification; so the files will be assembled in the same
   order even if they get jumbled up within a directory.

   A86 identifies the end of the source file names when it sees a
   name with no extension, or a name with the default object
   extension (COM, BIN or OBJ, as described shortly).  Sorry, you
   cannot have a source file with the default object extension.
                                                              3-2

3. You may optionally provide the word TO, to separate the source
   file names from the output file names.

4. The name of the output program.  If you do not provide an
   extension, A86 will assume one of the following extensions:

   a. .OBJ if you invoked the +O switch, for linkable object file
      production.

   b. .BIN if there is no +O switch, but there is an ORG 0 in
      your program.

   c. .COM otherwise.

   If you want your program file to have no extension, you end
   the file name with a period.

   You have the option to omit both the program file name and the
   symbol table file name from the invocation.  If you do so, A86
   will output the program source.COM (or source.OBJ or
   source.BIN) and the symbol table source.SYM; where "source" is
   a name derived from the list of source files, according to the
   rules described in the section "Strategies for Source File
   Maintenance" later in this chapter.

5. The name of the symbol table file.  You do not need to give
   the .SYM extension: A86 will produce a file with extension
   .SYM in any case.  In earlier versions of A86 I had allowed
   other extensions to be specified, but this meant that by
   carelessly permuting names on the command line, you could
   destroy a source file-- not good!

   You can omit the name of the symbol table file. If you do so,
   A86 will use the same root as the output program name.  If you
   desire no symbol table file, specify the +S switch in your
   invocation line or A86 environment variable (described later
   in this chapter).


Assembler Switches

In addition to input and output file names, you may intersperse
assembler switch settings anywhere after the A86 program name.
They are all acted upon immediately, no matter where they are on
the command line.  Some of the switches are discussed in more
detail elsewhere; I'll summarize them here:

+C  causes the assembler to output symbol names with lower case
    letters to its OBJ and SYM files.  The case of letters is
    still ignored during assembly.  I output the name as it
    appears in the last PUBLIC or EXTRN directive containing it;
    if there is no such directive, I use the first occurrence of
    the symbol to control which letters are output lower case.
    (+C duplicates Microsoft MASM's /mx switch.)
                                                              3-3

+c  causes the assembler to consider the case of letters within
    all non-built-in symbols as significant both during assembly
    and for output.  Thus, for example, you can define different
    symbols X and x.  (+c duplicates MASM's /ml switch.)

+D  causes the default base for numeric constants to be decimal,
    even if the constants have leading zeroes.

-D  causes the default base to be hexadecimal if there is a
    leading zero; decimal otherwise.

+E  causes the error-message-augmented source file to be written
    to yourname.ERR within the current directory, in all cases.
    With +E, A86 will never rewrite your original source file.

-E  causes A86 to insert error messages into your source file,
    whenever the file is in the current directory.  If the file
    is not in the current directory, A86 write an ERR file no
    matter what the E switch setting is.

+F  causes A86 to generate the 287 form of floating point
    instructions (no implicit FWAIT bytes are generated before
    the instructions).  This mode can also be specified in the
    program with the .287 directive.

+f  causes A86 to support emulation of the 8087.  When A86 sees a
    floating point instruction, it generates external references
    to be resolved by the standard emulation library (provided by
    Microsoft, Borland, etc.).  When you LINK your program to the
    emulation library, the floating point instructions are
    emulated by software.  NOTE you must be assembling to a
    linkable OBJ file for this mode to have effect; otherwise, +f
    is ignored.

-F  causes emulation and default-287 to be disabled.  You'll
    still get 287 generation if there is a .287 directive in your
    program.

+Ln  causes A86 to implement one or more of the following minor
    options for code-generation.  All these options enhance MASM
    compatibility.  The first three do so at the expense of
    program size.  The number n should be the sum of the numbers
    for each of the options selected.  For example, +L10 will
    select the options numbered 2 and 8.

    1 causes A86 to generate a longer (3-byte) instruction form
        for an unconditional JMP instruction to a forward
        reference local label, e.g. JMP >L1.  A86 normally
        assumes that since it's a local label, it will be nearby
        and the short, 2-byte form will work.  With this option
        your code will usually be longer than necessary, but
        you'll be spared having to occasionally go back and code
        an explicit JMP LONG >L1.

    2 causes A86 to refrain from optimizing the LEA instruction.
        Without this option A86 will replace an LEA with a
        shorter, equivalent MOV when it sees the chance.
                                                              3-4

    4 causes A86 to generate a slightly more inefficient internal
        format for memory references within an OBJ file.  The
        Power C compiler's MIX utility requires the inefficient
        form. The makers of Power C refused to support their
        customers on this by enhancing MIX, so I am forced to
        offer this option.

    8 causes A86 to assume that all ambiguous forward reference
        operands to instructions other than jumps or calls refer
        to memory variables and not offsets or constant values.
        You can override this on a one-by-one basis, with the
        OFFSET operator.

-L  causes A86 to revert to its default for all the above
options.

+O  causes A86 to produce a linkable .OBJ file when the output
    file name extension is not explicitly given.

-O  causes A86 to produce an executable .COM file when the output
    file name extension is not explicitly given.

+S  suppresses the creation of the symbol table (.SYM) file in
    normal (no errors) assembly.  This is overridden if you give
    an explicit symbols file name in the invocation line.

-S  causes the symbol table file to be created in all cases.

+X  causes A86 to require that undefined names be explicitly
    declared with an EXTRN when A86 is producing a linkable .OBJ
    file.  The X switch has no effect when A86 is making a .COM
    file.

-X  causes A86 to quietly assume that all undefined names are
    valid external references.

The default setting for all the switches is "minus".  Multiple
switches can be specified with a single sign; e.g. +OX is the
same as +O+X.



The A86 Environment Variable

To allow you to customize A86, the assembler examines the MS-DOS
environment variable named "A86" when it is invoked.  If there is
such a variable, its contents are inserted before the invocation
command tail, as if you had typed them yourself.

For example, if you execute the command SET A86=+OX while in DOS
(typically in the AUTOEXEC.BAT file run when the computer is
started), then the O and X switches will be "plus", unless
overridden with a "minus" setting in the command line.
                                                              3-5

You may also include one or more file names in the A86
environment variable.  Those files will always be assembled
first, before the files you specify on the command line.  This
allows you to set up a library of macro definitions, which will
always be automatically available to your programs.  Thus, for
example, the DOS command  SET A86=C:\A86\MACDEF.8 +OX  will cause
both the O and X switches to default ON, but will also cause the
file MACDEF.8 of subdirectory A86 of drive C to always be
assembled.


Using Standard Input as a Command Tail

The following feature is a bit advanced.  If you're not familiar
with the practice of redirecting standard input, you may safely
skip this section.

A86 can also be configured to take its command arguments from
standard input, in addition to the invocation command tail or the
A86 environment variable.  This allows A86 to be used in those
menu-driven systems that don't generate command tails for
programs.  It also allows other programs to create lists of files
to be assembled, then "pipe" the list to A86.

Here's how the feature works: when the command argument A86 is an
ampersand &, A86 will prompt for standard input.  If the
ampersand is seen but there are other things following it, the
ampersand is ignored.

For example, you can place a list of file names and switch
settings into a file called FILELIST.  You can then invoke the
assembler via

A86 <FILELIST &

which will cause the contents of the FILELIST file to be used as
a command line.

You may place an ampersand at the end of your A86 environment
variable.  If you do so, then A86 will prompt for file names
whenever it is invoked without any command arguments (you type
A86 followed immediately by the ENTER key to the MS-DOS prompt).
This is the mode used if you have a menu system that can't
generate an invocation command tail.

Note: when you redirect standard input so that it comes from a
file, A86 will read all the lines of the file (up to a limit of
1023 bytes), and substitute spaces for the line breaks.  Thus you
may give the file names on individual lines, for readability.
However, if the feature is invoked manually (no redirection), so
that you are typing in the line after the prompt, A86 will take
the first line only.  You need to give all your switches and
files on that one line.
                                                              3-6

Strategies for Source File Maintenance

A86 encourages modular programming, by letting you break your
source into separate files, with complete impunity.  A86 has no
concern whatsoever for file breaks-- it treats the sequence of
files as a single source code stream.

You should consider one or more of the following strategies,
which I have adopted in my source file management:

1. I name all my A86 source files with the same extension, which
   is found on no other files. The particular extension I have
   chosen is ".8". I did not choose the more common .ASM, because
   I have a few source files designed for MSDOS's assembler.  If
   you don't like .8, I would suggest .A86.

2. I keep a separate subdirectory on my hard disk for each
   multi-source-file A86 program I have.  Then the simple command
   "A86 *.8" performs the assembly for the current directory's
   program.

3. I exploit the fact that A86 expands wild cards into
   alphabetical order.  Whenever I want a source file to be
   assembled first (e.g., when it contains variable
   declarations), I append a decimal digit to the start of the
   file name: 0 for the first file, 1 for the second, etc., for
   however many files that need to be explicitly ordered.  If a
   file needs to come last, I append a "Z" to the start of the
   file name.

   To accommodate this strategy, I have programmed A86 to a
   somewhat complicated algorithm for determining the default
   output file name.  I use the name of the first source file;
   but I truncate the first character if it is a decimal digit.
   However, you may have a general-purpose file that must come
   first; so I have provided the following exception: if you have
   a source file whose name begins with the digit "9", that name
   (without the 9) is used.  If you don't like this, you can
   always explicitly give the program name you want: "A86 *.8
   MYPROG".


System Requirements for A86

A86 requires MS-DOS V2.00 or later.  No BIOS or lower-level calls
are made by A86, so A86 should run on any MS-DOS machine.  Please
let me know if you find this not to be the case.

A86 itself is a small program, and it is fairly flexible about
the memory it uses.  You can assemble small files with only 32K
bytes of memory beyond the program itself, which in the current
version is under 22K bytes-- a total of 54K bytes beyond the
operating system. The more memory you have, the more capacity A86
has, in symbol table size, source file size, and output file
size.  If it can, A86 will use up to 256K bytes of memory.
                                                              3-7

As I just noted, in a small-memory system A86 severely limits the
size of source files.  But remember that this doesn't hurt you
badly: you can split up source files with impunity.  A86
assembles a sequence of files as if it were a single source
stream (similar to the INCLUDE facility of other assemblers).

