dasm-assembler / dasm-assembler/dasm

MACRO/subroutine scope

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#37 3 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

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enhancement
Dominant language
C
Stars
257
Forks
55
PR merge metrics
No merged PRs in 30d

Description

As macros are effectively a text substitution 'engine', I would expect to be able to take any block of code, put it inside a macro, instantiate the macro, and it should work as before.

    jmp there
there

Replace with

    MAC gogo
    jmp there
    ENDM

    gogo
there

That should all work fine.
The problem is, if 'there' is a local label. Then it doesn't work.
It's because, I think, macros have this local 'SUBROUTINE' scope.

The reason it's super inconvenient is that you can't include a local branch as a destination in a macro, for example...

    CHECK_TIMER .exit
.exit

That will fail, of course, because of the local label. I don't think this is ideal, or correct, behaviour.
And it's super-inconvenient, as it makes it impossible to use locals inside macros.

I don't know if/what this might break if 'fixed', but I thought I'd post the issue for discussion.

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  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by reproducing the two examples in the issue and tracing how MAC/ENDM handles local labels and SUBROUTINE scope. Done means a branch to a local label inside a macro, such as CHECK_TIMER .exit followed by .exit, works without breaking existing macro behavior.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
c
Domain
compilers
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
25/100

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