Re: broken macro argument separation

["Jan Beulich" <JBeulich at novell dot com>]

>>> On 27.10.10 at 15:43, Nick Clifton <nickc@redhat.com> wrote:
> Hi Jan,
> 
>> .macro m arg1 arg2=0
>> 	.long	\arg1, \arg2
>> .endm
> 
>>     9              		m	1 -2 +3
>>     9 0018 01000000 	>  .long 1,-2+3
> 
>> i.e. white space between a number and '-' is retained while white
>> space between a number and '+' isn't.
> 
>> Suggestions/opinions anyone?
> 
> How about having the assembler issue a warning message when an operator 
> character is interpreted as a macro argument separator ?  The warning 
> could be disabled via a command line switch, but it would alert 
> assembler programmers to the behaviour if they were unaware of it.

Hmm, no, splitting arguments at operand characters is always an
error, and I don't think it happens anymore. Splitting at white
space is where the problem is, combined with cpp inserting
blanks between numbers and +, -, or . when the number was a
result of a macro expansion, and with the behavior of gas'
scrubber (eliminating blanks conditionally), which together
makes things rather unpredictable for the programmer.

Jan