DASM question

[e1will]

Is there any difference in DASM between these two lines in an .asm file?

 

LEFT_BORDER = 9
LEFT_BORDER = #9

Or is the # ignored?

 

--Will

[tokumaru]

Is there any difference in DASM between these two lines in an .asm file?

 

LEFT_BORDER = 9
LEFT_BORDER = #9

I'm not sure about DASM, but these would be treated differently in other assemblers I know of. It's not good programming practice to include the "#" in the definition though, because it will be harder to tell immediate and absolute/ZP instructions apart in the code, and that may result in bugs that will take you a long time to find.

[SeaGtGruff]

Is there any difference in DASM between these two lines in an .asm file?

 

LEFT_BORDER = 9
LEFT_BORDER = #9

Or is the # ignored?

 

--Will

I'm not sure if the context might make a difference, or perhaps the version of DASM, but when I tried it they were interpreted identically. So that means even if you use the pound sign in the equate, you'd still need to use a pound in an instruction if you want it to use the immediate mode:

 

LEFT_BORDER_1 = $9
LEFT_BORDER_2 = #9
  LDA LEFT_BORDER_1 ; this is equivalent to LDA $09 (zero page addressing)
  LDA LEFT_BORDER_2 ; this is also equivalent to LDA $09 (zero page addressing)
  LDA #LEFT_BORDER_1 ; this is equivalent to LDA #9 (immediate addressing)
  LDA #LEFT_BORDER_2 ; this is also equivalent to LDA #9 (immediate addressing)

Michael

[Bruce Tomlin]

The "#" is usually part of the instruction syntax, meaning "use immediate mode". The "$" is part of the syntax of constant numbers.

 

I'm assuming that the "=" stores a numeric value in the symbol table, not a macro substitution string (such as #define in C), in which case you can't use "#" like that.